WEBVTT

00:30.000 --> 00:37.000
Good morning, welcome to Aaron Mills Town Center.

00:39.000 --> 00:46.000
Three, two, one, take two. Good morning, welcome to Aaron Mills Town Center, the home of the

00:47.000 --> 00:52.120
world's largest permanent point of purchase video wall installation. My name is Calvin

00:52.120 --> 00:56.600
Fluck and I'm your video host all day here at EMTV. I want to take this opportunity to

00:56.600 --> 01:01.440
extend a very special and warm welcome to the film crew from Necessary Illusions. We've

01:01.440 --> 01:08.440
got an excellent line up of television programming for you today so let's get on with it.

01:09.440 --> 01:12.440
So how long have they been working on this documentary?

01:12.440 --> 01:19.440
Gosh, they've been working, I don't know how long, but every country I show up they're always there.

01:19.440 --> 01:20.440
They're there, huh?

01:20.440 --> 01:27.440
England, they're in Japan, all over the place. They must have 500 hours worth of tape by

01:27.440 --> 01:28.440
now.

01:28.440 --> 01:31.440
But they put together a real doozy when they're done, huh?

01:31.440 --> 01:36.440
I can't imagine who's going to want to hear somebody talk for an hour, but I guess they

01:36.440 --> 01:37.440
know what they're doing.

01:39.440 --> 01:40.440
Where are y'all from?

01:40.440 --> 01:41.440
Colorado.

01:41.440 --> 01:42.440
Colorado?

01:42.440 --> 01:43.440
Yeah.

01:43.440 --> 01:44.440
Yeah.

01:44.440 --> 01:49.440
We're making a film about Noam Chomsky. Does anybody know who Noam Chomsky is?

01:49.440 --> 01:50.440
No.

02:19.440 --> 02:26.440
Good afternoon and welcome to Wyoming Talks. My name is Mary Hicks.

02:49.440 --> 02:55.440
My guest today is well-known intellectual Noam Chomsky. Thank you for being on our program

02:55.440 --> 02:56.440
today.

02:56.440 --> 02:57.440
Very glad to be here.

02:57.440 --> 03:02.600
Well I know probably the main purpose for your trip to Wyoming is to discuss thought

03:02.600 --> 03:12.080
control in a democratic society. Now, I'd say I'm just Jane USA and I say, well gee,

03:12.080 --> 03:16.920
this is a democratic society and what do you mean thought control? I make up my own mind,

03:16.920 --> 03:20.440
I create my own destiny. What would you say to her?

03:20.440 --> 03:27.440
Well, I would suggest that Jane take a close look at the way the media operate, the way

03:27.440 --> 03:34.120
the public relations industry operates, the extensive thinking that's been going on for

03:34.120 --> 03:41.520
a long, long period about the necessity for finding ways to marginalize and control the

03:41.520 --> 03:51.680
public in a democratic society. But particularly to look at the evidence that's been accumulated

03:51.680 --> 03:56.600
about the way the major media, the sort of agenda setting media, I mean the national

03:56.600 --> 04:03.000
press and the television and so on, the way that they shape and control the kinds of opinions

04:03.000 --> 04:08.000
that appear, the kinds of information that comes through, the sources to which they go

04:08.000 --> 04:12.000
and so on and I think that Jane will find some very surprising things about the democratic

04:12.000 --> 04:13.000
system.

04:13.000 --> 04:30.040
I'd like to welcome all of you to this lecture today. Several years ago, Professor Chomsky

04:30.040 --> 04:36.240
was described in the New York Times Book Review as follows, judged in terms of the power,

04:36.240 --> 04:41.760
change, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important

04:41.760 --> 04:49.760
intellectual alive. Professor Noam Chomsky.

04:49.760 --> 05:00.880
I gather there are some people out behind that blackness there, but if I don't look

05:00.880 --> 05:06.200
you in the eye, it's because I don't see you. All I see is the blackness.

05:06.200 --> 05:12.280
So to begin by reporting something that's never read, the line about the arguably the

05:12.280 --> 05:15.920
most important intellectual in the world and so on comes from a publisher's blurb and you

05:15.920 --> 05:19.880
always got to watch those things because if you go back to the original, you'll find that

05:19.880 --> 05:24.840
that sentence is actually there. This is in the New York Times. But the next sentence

05:24.840 --> 05:29.920
is, since that's the case, how can he write such terrible things about American foreign

05:29.920 --> 05:35.840
policy? I may never quote that part, but in fact if it wasn't for that second sentence,

05:35.840 --> 05:40.480
I would begin to think that I'm doing something wrong and I'm not joking about that. It's

05:40.480 --> 05:45.080
true that the emperor doesn't have any clothes, but the emperor doesn't like to be told it

05:45.080 --> 05:50.240
and the emperor's lap dogs like the New York Times are not going to enjoy the experience

05:50.240 --> 05:53.920
if you do. Good evening. I'm Bill Moyers. What's more

05:53.920 --> 05:59.800
dangerous, the big stick or the big lie? Governments have used both against their own people. Tonight

05:59.800 --> 06:04.520
I'll be talking with a man who has been thinking about how we can see the developing line.

06:04.520 --> 06:09.920
He says that propaganda is to democracy what violence is to a dictatorship, but he hasn't

06:09.920 --> 06:14.680
lost faith in the power of common people to speak up for the truth.

06:14.680 --> 06:21.960
You have said that we live entangled in webs of endless deceit, that we live in a highly

06:21.960 --> 06:28.640
indoctrinated society where elementary truths are easily buried. Elementary truths such

06:28.640 --> 06:33.200
as the fact that we invaded South Vietnam or the fact that we're standing in the way

06:33.200 --> 06:39.840
of significant and have for years of significant moves towards arms negotiation or the fact

06:39.840 --> 06:45.680
that the military system is to a substantial extent, not totally, but to a substantial

06:45.680 --> 06:51.600
extent a mechanism by which the general population is compelled to provide a subsidy to high

06:51.600 --> 06:56.200
technology industry since they're not going to do it if you ask them to. You have to deceive

06:56.200 --> 07:00.880
them into doing it. There are many truths like that and we don't face them.

07:00.880 --> 07:03.400
Do you believe in common sense? I mean, you do.

07:03.400 --> 07:09.000
Absolutely. I believe in Cartesian common sense. I think people have the capacity to

07:09.000 --> 07:13.320
see through the deceit in which they're ensnared, but they've got to make the effort.

07:13.320 --> 07:18.360
It seems a little in Congress to hear a man from the ivory tower of Massachusetts Institute

07:18.360 --> 07:26.280
of Technology, a scholar, a distinguished linguistics scholar, talk about common people

07:26.280 --> 07:27.680
with such appreciation.

07:27.680 --> 07:33.920
I think that scholarship, at least the field that I work in, has the opposite consequences.

07:33.920 --> 07:41.040
My own studies in language and human cognition demonstrate to me at least what remarkable

07:41.040 --> 07:47.280
creativity ordinary people have. The very fact that people talk to one another is a

07:47.280 --> 07:52.560
reflection, just in a normal way, I don't mean anything particularly fancy, reflects

07:52.560 --> 07:57.600
deep-seated features of human creativity which in fact separate human beings from any other

07:57.600 --> 08:00.560
biological system we know.

08:00.560 --> 08:03.560
Tonight scientists talk to the animals, but are they talking back?

08:03.560 --> 08:12.680
The Journal with Barbara Frum and Mary Lou Finley.

08:12.680 --> 08:16.080
Communicating with animals is a serious scientific pursuit.

08:16.080 --> 08:21.520
This is Nim Chimpsky. Nim, jokingly named after the great linguist Noam Chomsky, was

08:21.520 --> 08:27.040
the great hope of animal communication in the 1970s. For four years, Petito and others

08:27.040 --> 08:32.280
coached him in sign language, but in the end they decided it was a lost cause. Nim could

08:32.280 --> 08:35.040
ask for things, but not much more.

08:35.040 --> 08:40.080
I would have loved to have a conversation with Nim and understand how he looked at the

08:40.080 --> 08:51.120
universe. He failed to communicate that information to me, and we gave him every opportunity.

08:51.120 --> 08:56.040
Noam Chomsky, theorist of language and political activist, has had an extraordinary career.

08:56.040 --> 09:01.560
I can think of none like it in recent American history, and few anywhere at any time. He

09:01.560 --> 09:05.920
has literally transformed the subject of linguistics. At the same time, he's become one of the most

09:05.920 --> 09:12.320
consistent critics of power politics in all its protean guises. Scholar and propagandist,

09:12.320 --> 09:16.240
his two careers apparently reinforce each other.

09:16.240 --> 09:21.360
In 1957, he published his Syntactic Structures, which began what has frequently been called

09:21.360 --> 09:29.480
the Chomskyian Revolution in linguistics. Like a latter-day Copernicus, Chomsky proposed

09:29.480 --> 09:35.200
a radically new way of looking at the theory of grammar. Chomsky worked out the formal

09:35.200 --> 09:40.600
rules of the universal grammar, which generated the specific rules of actual or natural languages.

09:40.600 --> 09:49.840
The general approach I'm taking seems to me rather simple-minded and unsatisficated,

09:49.840 --> 09:59.840
but nevertheless correct.

09:59.840 --> 10:04.360
Later he came to argue that such systems are innate features of human beings. They belong

10:04.360 --> 10:08.920
to the characteristics of the species and have been, in effect, programmed into the

10:08.920 --> 10:13.520
genetic equipment of the mind like the machine language in a computer.

10:13.520 --> 10:18.280
One needn't be interested in this question. Of course, I am interested in it. And the

10:18.280 --> 10:21.640
interesting question from this point of view would be, what is the nature of the initial

10:21.640 --> 10:25.640
state? That is, what is human nature in this respect?

10:25.640 --> 10:31.720
That in turn explains the...

10:31.720 --> 10:40.720
Astonishing... Let me try that next one.

10:40.720 --> 10:41.720
Facility.

10:41.720 --> 10:43.040
Facility.

10:43.040 --> 10:46.600
That in turn explains the astonishing facility that children have in learning the rules of

10:46.600 --> 10:51.280
natural language, no matter how complicated, incredibly quickly, from what are imperfect

10:51.280 --> 10:53.280
and often degenerate samples.

10:53.280 --> 10:54.280
Complicated.

10:54.280 --> 11:02.960
Complicated. It's a complicated word. You know what complicated means? It means it's

11:02.960 --> 11:03.960
complicated.

11:03.960 --> 11:11.640
If in fact our minds were a blank slate and experience wrote on them, we would be very

11:11.640 --> 11:17.800
impoverished creatures indeed. So the obvious hypothesis is that our language is the result

11:17.800 --> 11:22.360
of the unfolding of a genetically determined program. Well, plainly, there are different

11:22.360 --> 11:29.600
languages. In fact, the apparent variation of languages is quite superficial. It's certain,

11:29.600 --> 11:34.120
as certain as anything else, is that humans are not genetically programmed to learn one

11:34.120 --> 11:39.760
or another language. So you bring up a Japanese baby in Boston that will speak Boston English.

11:39.760 --> 11:46.440
And you bring up my child in Japan that will speak Japanese. And that means that from that

11:46.440 --> 11:50.920
it simply follows by logic that the basic structure of the languages must be essentially

11:50.920 --> 11:57.360
the same. Our task as scientists is to try to determine exactly what those fundamental

11:57.360 --> 12:02.900
principles are that cause the knowledge of language to unfold in the manner in which

12:02.900 --> 12:07.680
it does under particular circumstances. And incidentally, I think there is no doubt that

12:07.680 --> 12:13.480
the same must be true of other aspects of human intelligence and systems of understanding

12:13.480 --> 12:18.480
and interpretation and moral and aesthetic judgment and so on.

12:18.480 --> 12:22.840
The implications of these views have washed over the fields of psychology, education,

12:22.840 --> 12:29.320
sociology, philosophy, literary criticism, and logic.

12:29.320 --> 12:34.040
In the 50s and 60s, the bridge between your theoretical work and your political work seems

12:34.040 --> 12:39.240
to have been the attack on behaviorism. But now, behaviorism is no longer an issue, or

12:39.240 --> 12:44.600
so it seems. So how does this leave the link between your linguistics and your politics?

12:44.600 --> 12:50.720
Well I've always regarded the link, I've never really perceived much of a link to tell you

12:50.720 --> 12:57.260
the truth. Again, I would be very pleased to be able to discover intellectually convincing

12:57.260 --> 13:05.260
connections between my own anarchist convictions on the one hand and what I think I can demonstrate

13:05.260 --> 13:09.960
or at least begin to see about the nature of human intelligence on the other. But I

13:09.960 --> 13:16.240
simply can't find intellectually satisfying connections between those two domains. I can

13:16.240 --> 13:18.960
discover some tenuous points of contact.

13:18.960 --> 13:29.920
There is no possible creativity except through a system of rules. The problem I'm facing

13:29.920 --> 13:38.680
and I don't quite agree with Mr. Chomsky is when he puts these rules inside the

13:38.680 --> 13:47.680
human mind or nature. I wonder if the system of rules, of constraints, which make science

13:47.680 --> 13:56.480
a science, can't be found elsewhere, outside of the human mind, in social forms, in production

13:56.480 --> 14:00.480
relationships, in class struggles, etc.

14:00.480 --> 14:07.200
If it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of human nature is the

14:07.200 --> 14:20.800
need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting

14:20.800 --> 14:28.780
effects of coercive institutions, then of course it will follow that a decent society should

14:28.780 --> 14:35.400
maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.

14:35.400 --> 14:46.160
Now a federated, decentralized system of free associations incorporating economic as well

14:46.160 --> 14:51.720
as social institutions would be what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism. And it seems to

14:51.720 --> 14:57.840
me that it is the appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological

14:57.840 --> 15:03.560
society in which human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of

15:03.560 --> 15:04.560
cogs in a machine.

15:04.560 --> 15:12.000
Since the 1960s, Noam Chomsky has been the voice of a very characteristic brand of rationalist,

15:12.000 --> 15:17.640
libertarian socialism. He has attacked the abuses of power wherever he saw them. He has

15:17.640 --> 15:22.880
made himself deeply unpopular by his criticism of American policy, the subservience of the

15:22.880 --> 15:28.320
intelligentsia, the degradation of Zionism, the distortions of media and self-delusions

15:28.320 --> 15:35.320
and prevailing ideologies.

15:35.320 --> 15:45.840
Under the liberal administration of the 1960s, the club of academic intellectuals designed

15:45.840 --> 15:54.240
and implemented the Vietnam War and other similar though smaller actions. This particular

15:54.240 --> 15:58.680
community is a very relevant one to consider at a place like MIT because of course you

15:58.680 --> 16:04.880
are all free to enter this community. In fact, you are invited and encouraged to enter the

16:04.880 --> 16:11.720
community of technical intelligentsia and weapons designers and counterinsurgency experts

16:11.720 --> 16:18.360
and pragmatic planners of an American empire is one that you have a great deal of inducement

16:18.360 --> 16:25.360
to become associated with. The inducements in fact are very real. The rewards and power

16:25.360 --> 16:32.360
and affluence and prestige and authority are quite common.

16:32.360 --> 17:01.520
This came with the mail. I'll be with you in a second. Okay. I want to start. In your

17:01.520 --> 17:06.720
essay, Language and Freedom, you write, social action must be animated by a vision of a future

17:06.720 --> 17:12.160
society. I was wondering what vision of a future society animates you?

17:12.160 --> 17:19.480
Well, I have my own ideas as to what a future society should look like. I've written about

17:19.480 --> 17:26.360
them. I think that we should, at the most general level, we should be seeking out forms

17:26.360 --> 17:35.680
of authority and domination and challenging their legitimacy. Sometimes they are legitimate.

17:35.680 --> 17:41.560
That is, let's say they are needed for survival. So, for example, I wouldn't suggest that during

17:41.560 --> 17:47.720
the Second World War the forms of authority, we had a totalitarian society basically and

17:47.720 --> 17:52.000
I thought there was some justification for that under the wartime conditions. And there

17:52.000 --> 17:56.640
are other forms of, so for relations between parents and children, for example, involve

17:56.640 --> 18:05.640
forms of coercion which are sometimes justifiable. But any such, any form of coercion and control

18:05.640 --> 18:11.520
requires justification and most of them are completely unjustifiable. Now, at various

18:11.520 --> 18:16.560
stages of human civilization it's been possible to challenge some of them but not others.

18:16.560 --> 18:21.120
Others are too deep-seated or you don't see them or whatever. And so at any particular

18:21.120 --> 18:29.520
point you try to detect those forms of authority and domination which are subject to change

18:29.520 --> 18:35.680
and which do not have any legitimacy, in fact, which often strike at fundamental human rights

18:35.680 --> 18:40.440
and your understanding of fundamental human nature and rights. Well, what are the major

18:40.440 --> 18:46.900
things say today? There are some that are being addressed in a way. The feminist movement

18:46.900 --> 18:51.200
is addressing some. The civil rights movement is addressing others. The one major one that's

18:51.200 --> 18:56.200
not being seriously addressed is the one that's really at the core of the system of domination

18:56.200 --> 19:01.680
and that's private control over resources. And that means an attack on the fundamental

19:01.680 --> 19:07.160
structure of state capitalism. I think that's in order. That's not something far off in

19:07.160 --> 19:08.160
the future.

19:08.160 --> 19:18.520
Your live word. The alphabet has only 26 letters. With these 26 magic symbols, however, millions

19:18.520 --> 19:26.280
of words are written every day. Nowhere else are people so addicted to information and

19:26.280 --> 19:31.840
entertainment via the printed word. Every day the world comes thumping on the American

19:31.840 --> 19:37.600
doorstep and nothing that happens anywhere remains long a secret from the American newspaper

19:37.600 --> 19:44.000
reader. It comes to us pretty casually, the daily paper. But behind its arrival on your

19:44.000 --> 19:52.160
doorstep is one of journalism's major stories, how it got there.

19:52.160 --> 19:59.120
There is a standard view about democratic societies and the role of the media within

19:59.120 --> 20:05.480
them. It's expressed, for example, by Supreme Court Justice Powell when he spoke of the

20:05.480 --> 20:11.960
crucial role of the media in effecting the societal purpose of the First Amendment, namely

20:11.960 --> 20:20.160
enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process. That kind of formulation

20:20.160 --> 20:28.200
expresses the understanding that democracy requires free access to information and ideas

20:28.200 --> 20:35.760
and opinion. And the same conceptions hold not only with regard to the media, but with

20:35.760 --> 20:44.280
regard to educational institutions publishing the intellectual community generally.

20:44.280 --> 20:49.400
It is basic to the health of a democracy that no phase of government activity escape the

20:49.400 --> 20:55.480
scrutiny of the press. Here reporters are assigned to stories fateful not only to our nation,

20:55.480 --> 21:00.600
but to all nations. Congress, says the First Amendment, shall pass no law abridging the

21:00.600 --> 21:05.440
freedom of the press. And the chief executive himself throws open the doors of the White

21:05.440 --> 21:16.080
House to journalists representing papers of all shades of political opinion.

21:16.080 --> 21:21.480
But it is worth bearing in mind that there is a contrary view. And in fact the contrary

21:21.480 --> 21:29.080
view is very widely held and deeply rooted in our own civilization. It goes back to the

21:29.080 --> 21:36.200
origins of modern democracy, to the 17th century English Revolution, which was a complicated

21:36.200 --> 21:42.320
affair like most popular revolutions. There was a struggle between Parliament representing

21:42.320 --> 21:47.720
largely elements of the gentry and the merchants and the royalists representing other elite

21:47.720 --> 21:53.320
groups and they fought it out. But like many popular revolutions there was also a lot of

21:53.320 --> 21:57.960
popular ferment going on that was opposed to all of them. There were popular movements

21:57.960 --> 22:04.400
that were questioning everything. The relation between master and servant, the right of authority

22:04.400 --> 22:09.120
altogether, all kinds of things were being questioned. There was a lot of radical publishing,

22:09.120 --> 22:15.000
the printing presses had just come into existence. This disturbed all the elites on both sides

22:15.000 --> 22:22.520
of the Civil War. So as one historian pointed out at the time in 1660, he criticized the

22:22.520 --> 22:27.000
radical democrats, the ones who were calling for what we would call democracy, because

22:27.000 --> 22:32.640
they are making the people so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility

22:32.640 --> 22:42.040
enough to submit to a civil rule. Now underlying these doctrines, which were very widely held,

22:42.040 --> 22:47.920
has a certain conception of democracy. It's a game for elites, it's not for the ignorant

22:47.920 --> 22:56.440
masses who have to be marginalized, diverted and controlled, of course for their own good.

22:56.440 --> 23:02.380
The same principles were upheld in the American colonies. The dictum of the founding fathers

23:02.380 --> 23:07.560
of American democracy that, I'm quoting, the people who own the country ought to govern

23:07.560 --> 23:26.000
it, quoting John Jay. Now in modern times for elites, this contrary view about the intellectual

23:26.000 --> 23:30.920
life and the media and so on, this contrary view in fact is the standard one, I think,

23:30.920 --> 23:40.960
apart from rhetorical flourishes. From Washington, D.C., he's intellectual, author and linguist,

23:40.960 --> 23:48.000
Professor Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent. What is that title meant to describe? Well,

23:48.000 --> 23:55.520
the title is actually borrowed from a book by Walter Lippmann written back around 1921

23:55.520 --> 24:01.640
in which he described what he called the manufacture of consent as a revolution in the practice

24:01.640 --> 24:08.680
of democracy. What it amounts to is a technique of control. And he said this was useful and

24:08.680 --> 24:15.720
necessary because the common interests, the general concerns of all people elude the public.

24:15.720 --> 24:19.860
Public just isn't up to dealing with them and they have to be the domain of what he

24:19.860 --> 24:29.200
called a specialized class. Notice that that's the opposite of the standard view about democracy.

24:29.200 --> 24:35.200
There's a version of this expressed by the highly respected moralist and theologian Reinhold

24:35.200 --> 24:43.120
Niebuhr who was very influential on contemporary policy makers. His view was that rationality

24:43.120 --> 24:49.840
belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows

24:49.840 --> 25:00.120
not reason but faith. And this naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally

25:00.120 --> 25:05.800
potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person

25:05.800 --> 25:19.800
on course. It's not the case, as the naive might think, that indoctrination is inconsistent

25:19.800 --> 25:25.320
with democracy. Rather, as this whole line of thinkers observes, it's the essence of

25:25.320 --> 25:32.320
democracy. The point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what we would nowadays

25:32.320 --> 25:37.320
call a totalitarian state, it doesn't much matter what people think because you've got

25:37.320 --> 25:44.320
a bludgeon over their head and you can control what they do. But when the state loses the

25:44.320 --> 25:49.320
bludgeon, when you can't control people by force and when the voice of the people can

25:49.320 --> 25:55.520
be heard, you have this problem. It may make people so curious and so arrogant that they

25:55.520 --> 26:00.240
don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule and therefore you have to control what

26:00.240 --> 26:08.240
people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used

26:08.240 --> 26:15.480
to be called propaganda. Manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions, various ways

26:15.480 --> 26:20.160
of either marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion.

26:45.480 --> 27:09.280
The oldest of two boys, Avram Nonchomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928.

27:09.280 --> 27:15.760
As a Jewish child, the anti-Semitism of the time affected him. Both parents taught Hebrew

27:15.760 --> 27:21.680
and he became fascinated by literature, reading translations of French and Russian classics.

27:21.680 --> 27:27.560
He also took an interest in a grammar book written by his father on Hebrew of the Middle

27:27.560 --> 27:34.480
Ages. He recalls a childhood absorbed in reading, curled up in a sofa, often borrowing up to

27:34.480 --> 27:40.960
twelve books at once from the library. He is married to Carol and they have three children.

27:40.960 --> 27:45.880
I don't like to impose on my wife and children a form of life that they certainly haven't

27:45.880 --> 27:51.720
selected for themselves, namely one of public exposure or exposure to the public media.

27:51.720 --> 27:55.520
That's their choice and I don't believe that they have themselves selected this. I don't

27:55.520 --> 28:00.720
impose it on them. I don't like to attack them from it, frankly. The second, perhaps

28:00.720 --> 28:11.680
principal point is that I'm rather against the whole notion of developing public personalities

28:11.680 --> 28:16.200
who are treated as stars of one kind or another, where aspects of their personal life are supposed

28:16.200 --> 28:17.960
to have some significance and so on.

28:17.960 --> 28:19.960
Take one in the reception room.

28:19.960 --> 28:25.520
You said that you were just like us. You went to school, got good grades. What made you

28:25.520 --> 28:31.120
start being critical and seeing the difference? What started the change?

28:31.120 --> 28:36.720
Well, you know, there are all kinds of personal factors in anybody's life. First of all, don't

28:36.720 --> 28:57.200
forget I grew up in a depression.

28:57.200 --> 29:02.600
My parents actually happened to have jobs, which was kind of unusual. They were Hebrew

29:02.600 --> 29:09.000
school teachers, so lower middle class. For them, everything revolved around being Jewish,

29:09.000 --> 29:15.040
Hebrew, Palestine in those days and so on. And I grew up in that media. So, you know,

29:15.040 --> 29:18.680
I learned Hebrew and went to Hebrew school, became a Hebrew school teacher, went to Hebrew

29:18.680 --> 29:27.360
college, led youth groups, summer camps, Hebrew camps, the whole business. The branch of the

29:27.360 --> 29:32.920
Zionist movement that I was part of was all involved in socialist binationalism and Arab-Jewish

29:32.920 --> 29:41.920
cooperation and all sorts of nice stuff.

29:41.920 --> 29:53.960
What did they think of you hopping on a train and going up to New York and hanging out at

29:53.960 --> 29:59.680
Anarchist bookstores on 4th Avenue and talking to your working-class relatives there?

29:59.680 --> 30:04.840
I mean, I don't want to totally trust my childhood memories, obviously, but the family was split

30:04.840 --> 30:09.120
up. Like a lot of Jewish families, it went in all sorts of directions. There were sectors

30:09.120 --> 30:15.400
that were super-orthodox. There were other sectors that were very radical and very assimilated

30:15.400 --> 30:22.340
and working-class intellectuals. And that's the sector that I naturally gravitated towards.

30:22.340 --> 30:26.920
It was a very lively intellectual culture. For one thing, it was a working-class culture,

30:26.920 --> 30:33.840
had working-class values, values of solidarity, socialist values and so on. There was a sense

30:33.840 --> 30:37.000
somehow things were going to get better. And the institutional structure was around the

30:37.000 --> 30:42.680
method of fighting, you know, of organizing, of doing things, which had some hope.

30:42.680 --> 30:48.160
And I also had the advantage of having gone to an experimental progressive school, to

30:48.160 --> 30:53.360
a Deweyite school, which was quite good, run by a university there. And, you know, there

30:53.360 --> 30:59.440
was no such thing as competition. There was no such thing as being a good student. I mean,

30:59.440 --> 31:03.360
literally, the concept of being a good student didn't even arise until I got to high school.

31:03.360 --> 31:07.440
I went to the academic high school and suddenly discovered I'm a good student, you know, which

31:07.440 --> 31:11.320
is then I hated high school because I had to do all the things you have to do to get

31:11.320 --> 31:16.200
into college. But until then, it was kind of a free, pretty open system. And I don't

31:16.200 --> 31:20.280
know, there were lots of other things, but maybe I was just cantankerous.

31:20.280 --> 31:24.680
As a historian, I have read with interest and amazement your long review article of

31:24.680 --> 31:28.640
Gabriel Jackson's Spanish Civil War, and that's a very respectable piece of history. And I

31:28.640 --> 31:30.560
can appreciate how much work goes into that. When did you find...

31:30.560 --> 31:31.560
You know, when I did that work?

31:31.560 --> 31:32.560
When did you do that?

31:32.560 --> 31:43.000
I did that work in the early 1940s when I was about 12 years old.

31:43.000 --> 31:47.000
The first article I wrote was right after the fall of Barcelona in the school newspaper.

31:47.000 --> 31:54.000
It was a lament about the rise of fascism in 1939.

31:54.000 --> 31:59.400
Actually, I guess one of the people who was the biggest influence in my life was an uncle

31:59.400 --> 32:05.440
who had never gone past fourth grade. He was, you know, had a background in crime, then

32:05.440 --> 32:11.640
left-wing politics and all sorts of things. But he was a hunchback, and as a result, he

32:11.640 --> 32:17.400
could get a newsstand in New York. They had some program for people with physical disabilities.

32:17.400 --> 32:21.800
Some of you are from New York, I guess. Well, you know the 72nd Street kiosk?

32:21.800 --> 32:22.800
Yes!

32:22.800 --> 32:27.920
You know that? That's where I got my political education. At 72nd Street, there's a place

32:27.920 --> 32:31.960
where you come out of the subway, and everybody goes toward 72nd Street. And there were two

32:31.960 --> 32:36.760
newsstands on that side, which were doing fine, and there's two newsstands on the back.

32:36.760 --> 32:39.560
And nobody comes out the back, you know. And that's where his newsstand...

32:39.560 --> 32:46.560
But it was a very lively place. He was a very bright guy. It was the 30s. There were a lot

32:47.640 --> 32:52.160
of emigres, you know, and a lot of people were hanging around there. And in the evenings,

32:52.160 --> 32:57.640
especially, it was sort of a literary political salon, you know, every kind of guy was hanging

32:57.640 --> 33:03.280
around, arguing and talking. And as a kid, like 11, 12 years old, the biggest excitement

33:03.280 --> 33:08.840
was to work the newsstand.

33:08.840 --> 33:13.760
You write in Manufacturing Consent that it's the primary function of the mass media in

33:13.760 --> 33:18.640
the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the

33:18.640 --> 33:21.840
government and the private sector. What are those interests?

33:21.840 --> 33:27.120
Well, if you want to understand the way any society works, ours or any other, the first

33:27.120 --> 33:31.960
place to look is who makes... who is in a position to make the decisions that determine

33:31.960 --> 33:38.160
the way the society functions. Societies differ, but in ours, the major decisions over what

33:38.160 --> 33:43.600
happens in the society, decisions over investment and production and distribution and so on,

33:43.600 --> 33:50.120
are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations and conglomerates

33:50.120 --> 33:55.760
and investment firms and so on. They are also the ones who staff the major executive positions

33:55.760 --> 34:00.240
in the government, and they're the ones who own the media, and they're the ones who have

34:00.240 --> 34:04.720
to be in a position to make the decisions. They have an overwhelmingly dominant role

34:04.720 --> 34:11.280
in the way life happens, you know, what's done in the society. Within the economic system,

34:11.280 --> 34:17.880
by law and in principle, they dominate. The control over resources and the need to satisfy

34:17.880 --> 34:23.640
their interests imposes very sharp constraints on the political system and the ideological

34:23.640 --> 34:24.640
system.

34:24.640 --> 34:33.640
When you talk about manufacturing of consent, whose consent is being manufactured?

34:33.640 --> 34:37.960
We can... to start with, there are two different groups we can get into more detail, but at

34:37.960 --> 34:43.480
the first level of approximation, there's two targets for propaganda. One is what's

34:43.480 --> 34:53.360
sometimes called the political class. There's maybe 20% of the population, which is relatively

34:53.360 --> 34:59.360
educated, more or less articulate, that plays some kind of role in decision making. They're

34:59.360 --> 35:06.160
supposed to sort of participate in social life, either as managers or cultural managers,

35:06.160 --> 35:11.320
like say teachers, writers, and so on. They're supposed to vote. They're supposed to play

35:11.320 --> 35:18.160
some role in the way economic and political and cultural life goes on. Now, their consent

35:18.160 --> 35:24.040
is crucial. One group that has to be deeply indoctrinated. Then there's maybe 80% of the

35:24.040 --> 35:32.000
population whose main function is to follow orders and not to think, and not to pay attention

35:32.000 --> 35:36.200
to anything. And the other ones usually pay the cost.

35:36.200 --> 35:44.400
Alright. Professor Chomsky, you outlined a model with filters that propaganda is sent

35:44.400 --> 35:48.560
through, that's a way to the public. Can you briefly outline those?

35:48.560 --> 35:52.920
It's basically an institutional analysis of the major media, what we call a propaganda

35:52.920 --> 35:58.760
model. We're talking primarily about the national media, those media that sort of set a general

35:58.760 --> 36:04.560
agenda that others more or less adhere to, to the extent that they even pay much attention

36:04.560 --> 36:10.400
to national or international affairs. Now, the elite media are sort of the agenda-setting

36:10.400 --> 36:15.480
media. That means the New York Times, the Washington Post, the major television channels,

36:15.480 --> 36:22.480
and so on. They set the general framework. Local media more or less adapt to their structure.

36:22.480 --> 36:25.480
World news.

36:25.480 --> 36:49.480
And they do this in all sorts of ways, by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns,

36:49.480 --> 36:55.680
by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within

36:55.680 --> 36:56.680
certain limits.

36:56.680 --> 36:57.680
Forty-five seconds.

36:57.680 --> 37:10.640
They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict in order to serve the

37:10.640 --> 37:13.640
interests of dominant elite groups in society.

37:13.640 --> 37:18.600
There is an unusual amount of attention focused today on the five nations of Central America.

37:18.600 --> 37:25.760
This is democracy's diary. Here, for our instruction, are triumphs and disasters, the pattern of

37:25.760 --> 37:32.880
life's changing fabric. Here is great journalism, a revelation of the past, a guide to the present,

37:32.880 --> 37:37.880
and a clue to the future.

37:37.880 --> 37:57.320
The New York Times is certainly the most important newspaper in the United States, and one could

37:57.320 --> 38:03.440
argue the most important newspaper in the world. The New York Times plays an enormous

38:03.440 --> 38:09.200
role in shaping the perception of the current world on the part of the politically active,

38:09.200 --> 38:14.560
educated classes. Also, the New York Times has a special role, and I believe its editors

38:14.560 --> 38:19.960
probably feel that they bear a heavy burden in the sense that the New York Times creates

38:19.960 --> 38:21.640
history.

38:21.640 --> 38:26.920
What happened years ago may have a bearing on what happens tomorrow. Millions of clippings

38:26.920 --> 38:33.920
are preserved in the Times Library, all indexed for instant use, a priceless archive of events,

38:33.920 --> 38:35.840
and the men who make them.

38:35.840 --> 38:40.000
That is, history is what appears in the New York Times archives, a place where people

38:40.000 --> 38:44.200
will go to find out what happened as the New York Times. Therefore, it's extremely important

38:44.200 --> 38:49.240
if history is going to be shaped in an appropriate way that certain things appear, certain things

38:49.240 --> 38:54.680
not appear, certain questions be asked, other questions be ignored, and that issues be framed

38:54.680 --> 39:01.680
in a particular fashion. Now, in whose interests is history being so shaped? Well, I think

39:01.680 --> 39:04.120
that's not very difficult to answer.

39:04.120 --> 39:10.000
The process by which people make up their minds on this is a much more mysterious process

39:10.000 --> 39:16.320
than you would ever guess from reading manufacturing consent. There is a saying about legislation

39:16.320 --> 39:23.320
that legislation is like making sausage, that the less you know about how it's done, the

39:23.320 --> 39:28.280
better for your appetite. The same is true of this business. If you are in a conference

39:28.280 --> 39:32.960
in which decisions are being made on what to put on page one or what not, you would

39:32.960 --> 39:39.960
get, I think, the impression that important decisions were being made in a flippant and

39:40.080 --> 39:46.000
frivolous way. But in fact, given the pressures of time to try to get things out, you resort

39:46.000 --> 39:52.640
to a kind of a shorthand, and you have to fill that paper up every day. It's curious

39:52.640 --> 39:59.640
in a kind of a mirror image way that Professor Chomsky is in total accord with Reid Irvine,

39:59.720 --> 40:06.720
who at the right-wing end of the spectrum says exactly what Chomsky does about the insinuating

40:06.720 --> 40:13.000
influence of the press, of the big media, as, quote, agenda-setters, to use one of the

40:13.000 --> 40:20.000
great buzzwords of the time. And of course, Reid Irvine sees this as a left-wing conspiracy

40:20.000 --> 40:24.960
conspiracy of foisting liberal ideas in both domestic and foreign affairs on the American

40:24.960 --> 40:30.000
people. But in both cases, I think that the premise really is an insult to the intelligence

40:30.000 --> 40:31.960
of the people who consume news.

40:31.960 --> 40:37.920
Now, to eliminate confusion, all of this has nothing to do with liberal or conservative

40:37.920 --> 40:43.840
bias. According to the propaganda model, both liberal and conservative wings of the media,

40:43.840 --> 40:49.520
whatever those terms are supposed to mean, fall within the same framework of assumptions.

40:49.520 --> 40:54.080
In fact, if the system functions well, it ought to have a liberal bias, or at least

40:54.080 --> 41:00.080
appear to, because if it appears to have a liberal bias, that will serve to bound thought

41:00.080 --> 41:05.520
even more effectively. In other words, if the press is indeed adversarial and liberal

41:05.520 --> 41:11.260
and all these bad things, then how can I go beyond it? They're already so extreme in their

41:11.260 --> 41:16.520
opposition to power that to go beyond it would be to take off from the planet. So therefore,

41:16.520 --> 41:23.520
it must be that the presuppositions that are accepted in the liberal media are sacrosanct,

41:23.520 --> 41:28.880
can't go beyond them. And a well-functioning system would in fact have a bias of that kind.

41:28.880 --> 41:35.280
The media would then serve to say, in effect, thus far and no further.

41:35.280 --> 41:42.280
We ask, what would you expect of those media on just relatively uncontroversial, guided

41:42.280 --> 41:47.680
free market assumptions? And when you look at them, you find a number of major factors

41:47.680 --> 41:52.680
entering into determining what their products are. These are what we call the filters. So

41:52.680 --> 41:56.960
one of them, for example, is ownership, who owns them.

41:56.960 --> 42:02.400
The major agenda setting media, after all, what are they as institutions in the society?

42:02.400 --> 42:07.560
What are they? Well, in the first place, they are major corporations, in fact, huge corporations.

42:07.560 --> 42:13.120
Furthermore, they're integrated with and sometimes owned by even larger corporations, conglomerates.

42:13.120 --> 42:20.120
So for example, by Westinghouse, GE, and so on.

42:22.960 --> 42:28.880
What I wanted to know was how specifically the elites control the media. What I mean

42:28.880 --> 42:30.840
is... It's like asking how do the elites control

42:30.840 --> 42:37.360
General Motors? Well, why isn't that a question? I mean, General Motors is an institution of

42:37.360 --> 42:40.240
the elites. They don't have to control it. They own it.

42:40.240 --> 42:47.240
Except, I guess, at a certain level, I think... I guess I work with student press, so I know

42:48.240 --> 42:51.320
reporters and stuff. The elites don't control the student press,

42:51.320 --> 42:55.880
but I'll tell you something. You try in the student press to do anything that breaks out

42:55.880 --> 42:59.920
of conventions, and you're going to have the whole business community around here down

42:59.920 --> 43:05.960
on your neck, and the university is going to get threatened. Maybe they'll pay any attention

43:05.960 --> 43:09.640
to you. That's possible. But if you get to the point where they don't stop paying attention

43:09.640 --> 43:14.840
to you, the pressures will start coming, because there are people with power. There are people

43:14.840 --> 43:19.000
who own the country, and they're not going to let the country get out of control.

43:19.000 --> 43:25.120
What do you think about that? This is the old cabal theory that somewhere

43:25.120 --> 43:30.920
there's a room with a base-covered desk, and there are a bunch of capitalists sitting around,

43:30.920 --> 43:34.920
and they're pulling strings. These rooms don't exist. I mean, I hate to tell Noam Chomsky

43:34.920 --> 43:39.320
this. You don't share that. I think it is the most absolute rubbish I've ever heard.

43:39.320 --> 43:44.920
This is the current fashion in the universities. It's patent nonsense, and I think it's nothing

43:44.920 --> 43:52.320
but a fashion. It's a way that intellectuals have of feeling like a clergy. There has to

43:52.320 --> 44:05.320
be something wrong.

44:22.320 --> 44:50.920
So, what we have in the first place is major corporations, which are parts of even bigger

44:50.920 --> 44:58.320
conglomerates. Now, like any other corporation, they have a product, which they sell to a

44:58.320 --> 45:04.720
market. The market is advertisers, that is, other businesses. What keeps the media functioning

45:04.720 --> 45:09.120
is not the audience. They make money from their advertisers. Remember,

45:09.120 --> 45:14.920
we're talking about the elite media, so they're trying to sell a good product, a product which

45:14.920 --> 45:20.120
raises advertising rates. Ask your friends in the advertising industry. That means that

45:20.120 --> 45:25.120
they want to adjust their audience to the more elite and affluent audience. That raises

45:25.120 --> 45:31.320
advertising rates. So, what you have is institutions, corporations, big corporations, that are selling

45:31.320 --> 45:37.520
relatively privileged audiences to other businesses. Well, what point of view would you expect

45:37.520 --> 45:42.520
to come out of this? I mean, without any further assumptions, what you'd predict is that what

45:42.520 --> 45:47.720
comes out is a picture of the world, a perception of the world, that satisfies the needs and

45:47.720 --> 45:54.720
the interests and the perceptions of the sellers, the buyers, and the product.

45:54.720 --> 46:00.720
Now, there are many other factors that press in the same direction. If people try to enter

46:00.720 --> 46:04.720
the system who don't have that point of view, they're likely to be excluded somewhere along

46:04.720 --> 46:09.720
the way. After all, no institution is going to happily design a mechanism to self-destruct.

46:09.720 --> 46:15.120
That's not the way institutions function. So, they all work to exclude or marginalize

46:15.120 --> 46:20.720
or eliminate dissenting voices or alternative perspectives and so on because they're dysfunctional.

46:20.720 --> 46:26.720
They're dysfunctional to the institution itself. Do you think you've escaped the ideological

46:26.720 --> 46:32.720
indoctrination of the media and of society that you grew up in? Have I? Often not. I

46:32.720 --> 46:37.720
mean, when I look back and think of the things that I haven't done that I should have done,

46:37.720 --> 46:46.720
it's very, it's not a pleasant experience. So, what's the story of young Noam in the

46:46.720 --> 46:51.720
schoolyard? Yeah, another, I mean, that was a personal thing for me. I don't know why

46:51.720 --> 46:55.720
it's of interest to anyone else, but I do remember. Well, you drew certain conclusions.

46:55.720 --> 46:59.720
Well, yeah, I mean, I had a big influence on me. I mean, I remember when I was about

46:59.720 --> 47:06.720
six, I guess, first grade, there was the standard fat kid everybody made fun of. And I remember

47:06.720 --> 47:14.720
in the schoolyard, he was on a, you know, standing on a, right outside the school classroom

47:14.720 --> 47:19.720
and a bunch of kids outside sort of taunting him and, you know, so on. And one of the kids

47:19.720 --> 47:23.720
actually brought over his older brother, sort of like from third grade instead of first

47:23.720 --> 47:27.720
grade, you know, big kid. And he was going to, you know, beat him up or something. And

47:27.720 --> 47:33.720
I remember going up to stand next to him, feeling somebody ought to help him. And I

47:33.720 --> 47:39.720
did for a while. And then I got scared and I went away. And I was very much ashamed of

47:39.720 --> 47:47.720
it afterwards and sort of felt, you know, not going to do that again. That's a feeling

47:47.720 --> 47:53.720
that's stuck with me. You should stick with the underdog. And the shame remained. You

47:53.720 --> 48:00.720
should have stayed there. You had already established you were a professor at MIT. You

48:00.720 --> 48:05.720
had a reputation. You had a terrific career ahead of you. You decided to become a political

48:05.720 --> 48:10.720
activist. Now, here is a classic case of somebody whom the institution does not seem to have

48:10.720 --> 48:14.720
filtered out. I mean, you were a good boy up until then, were you? Or you'd always been

48:14.720 --> 48:18.720
a slight, sometimes you were a rebel. Yeah, pretty much. I had been pretty much outside.

48:18.720 --> 48:22.720
You felt isolated. You felt out of sympathy with the prevailing currents of American life.

48:22.720 --> 48:27.720
But a lot of people do that. Suddenly in 1964, you decide, I have to do something about this.

48:27.720 --> 48:31.720
What made you do that? Well, that was a very conscious decision and a very uncomfortable

48:31.720 --> 48:37.720
decision because I knew what the consequences would be. I was in a very favorable position.

48:37.720 --> 48:42.720
I had the kind of work I liked. We had a lively, exciting department. The field was going well.

48:42.720 --> 48:46.720
Personal life was fine. I was living in a nice place, children growing up. Everything

48:46.720 --> 48:50.720
looked perfect. And I knew I was giving it up. And at that time, remember, it was not

48:50.720 --> 48:55.720
just giving talks. I began involved right away in resistance. And I expected to spend

48:55.720 --> 49:00.720
years in jail and came very close to it. In fact, my wife went back to graduate school

49:00.720 --> 49:04.720
in part because we assumed she was going to have to support the children. These were the

49:04.720 --> 49:14.720
expectations. And I recognized that if I returned to these interests, which were the

49:14.720 --> 49:19.720
dominant interests of my own youth, life would become very uncomfortable because I know that

49:19.720 --> 49:24.720
the United States, you don't get sent to psychiatric prison and they don't send a death

49:24.720 --> 49:31.720
squad after you and so on. But there are definite penalties for breaking the rules. So these

49:31.720 --> 49:36.720
were real decisions. And it simply seemed at that point that it was just hopelessly

49:36.720 --> 49:38.720
immoral not to.

49:41.720 --> 49:47.720
I'm Noam Chomsky. I'm on the faculty at MIT. And I've been getting more and more heavily

49:47.720 --> 50:05.720
involved in anti-war activities for the last few years. Beginning with writing articles

50:05.720 --> 50:10.720
and making speeches and speaking to congressmen and that sort of thing, and gradually getting

50:10.720 --> 50:16.720
involved more and more directly in resistance activities of various sorts. I've come to

50:16.720 --> 50:23.720
the feeling myself that the most effective form of political action that is open to a

50:23.720 --> 50:30.720
responsible and concerned citizen at the moment is action that really involves direct resistance,

50:30.720 --> 50:37.720
refusal to take part in what I think are war crimes, to raise the domestic cost of American

50:37.720 --> 50:43.720
aggression overseas through non-participation and support for those who are refusing to

50:43.720 --> 50:47.720
take part in particular draft resistance throughout the country.

50:57.720 --> 51:02.720
I think that we can see quite clearly some very, very serious defects and flaws in our

51:02.720 --> 51:07.720
society, our level of culture, our institutions, which are going to have to be corrected by

51:07.720 --> 51:11.720
operating outside of the framework that is commonly accepted. I think we're going to

51:11.720 --> 51:14.720
have to find new ways of political action.

51:14.720 --> 51:21.720
I rejoice in your disposition to argue the Vietnam War as a political

51:21.720 --> 51:49.720
question, especially when I recognize what an act of self-control this must involve.

51:49.720 --> 51:52.720
It does. It really does. I mean, I think that there's a kind of issue where...

51:52.720 --> 51:53.720
You don't grow up. You don't grow up.

51:53.720 --> 51:55.720
Sometimes I lose my temper. Maybe not tonight.

51:55.720 --> 52:00.720
Maybe not tonight. Because, if you would, I'd smash you in the goddamn face.

52:00.720 --> 52:05.720
It's a good reason for not losing my temper.

52:05.720 --> 52:12.720
You say the war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men.

52:12.720 --> 52:17.720
Including all of us. Including myself. Including every... That's the next sentence. Same sentence.

52:17.720 --> 52:21.720
Sure, sure, sure. Because you count everybody in the company of the guilty.

52:21.720 --> 52:22.720
I think that's true in this case.

52:22.720 --> 52:23.720
Yeah. But then...

52:23.720 --> 52:24.720
See, one of the points I was trying...

52:24.720 --> 52:26.720
This is a sense of theological observation, isn't it?

52:26.720 --> 52:27.720
No, I don't think so.

52:27.720 --> 52:29.720
Because as somebody points out, if everybody's guilty of everything, then nobody's guilty of anything.

52:29.720 --> 52:36.720
No, I don't believe that. See, I think the point that I'm trying to make, and I think ought to be made,

52:36.720 --> 52:44.720
is that the real... At least to me, I say this elsewhere in the book, what seems to me a very, in a sense,

52:44.720 --> 52:51.720
terrifying aspect of our society and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment

52:51.720 --> 52:56.720
with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe such events.

52:56.720 --> 53:01.720
I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler or LeMay or other that crops up.

53:01.720 --> 53:06.720
These people would not be able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity.

53:06.720 --> 53:11.720
And therefore, I think that it's, in some sense, the sane and reasonable and tolerant people

53:11.720 --> 53:19.720
who share a very serious burden of guilt that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others

53:19.720 --> 53:22.720
who seem more extreme and more violent.

53:25.720 --> 53:31.720
Twelve million pounds of confetti dropped into New York City's so-called Canyon of Heroes.

53:31.720 --> 53:35.720
Americans were officially welcoming the troops home from the Persian Gulf War.

53:35.720 --> 53:37.720
It worked out really great for us.

53:37.720 --> 53:45.720
I mean, it just goes to show that we're a mighty nation and we'll be there no matter what comes along.

53:45.720 --> 53:50.720
I mean, it's the strongest country in the world, and you've got to be glad to live here.

53:50.720 --> 53:54.720
So tell me what you feel about media coverage of the war.

53:54.720 --> 53:59.720
I guess it was good. It got to be a bit much after a while, but I guess it was good to know everything.

53:59.720 --> 54:05.720
I guess in Vietnam you didn't really know a lot was going on, but here you're pretty much up to the moment on everything.

54:05.720 --> 54:08.720
So I guess it was good to be informed.

54:10.720 --> 54:18.720
For the first time because of technology, we have the ability to be live from many locations around the globe.

54:18.720 --> 54:25.720
And because of the format and all-news network, we can spend whatever time is necessary

54:25.720 --> 54:31.720
to bring the viewer the complete context of that day's portion of the story.

54:31.720 --> 54:38.720
And by context, I mean the institutional memory that is critical to understand why and how.

54:38.720 --> 54:46.720
And that's those who are analysts and do commentary and those who can explain.

54:46.720 --> 54:52.720
Select that last piece, ITN Israel post war.

54:52.720 --> 55:05.720
David Brinkley once said that you step in front of the camera and you get out of news business and into show business.

55:05.720 --> 55:14.720
But nonetheless, that should not in any way subtract or obscure the need for the basic standards of good journalism.

55:14.720 --> 55:17.720
Pat, hang tight. Let me give you a lead for selling you right now.

55:17.720 --> 55:31.720
President Bush and Prime Minister Major have closed or have almost rejected the Soviet peace talk, peace efforts.

55:31.720 --> 55:38.720
In Saudi Arabia, the door is being left open. Rick Salinger is standing by live in Riyadh with the latest.

55:38.720 --> 55:41.720
All but closed.

55:41.720 --> 55:51.720
Accuracy, speed, a fair approach, honesty and integrity within the reporter to try and bring the truth, whatever the truth may be.

55:51.720 --> 55:59.720
Going to war is a serious business. In a totalitarian society, the dictator just says we're going to war and everybody marches.

55:59.720 --> 56:07.720
And with this weapon of human brotherhood in our hands, we are seeing the war for men's minds not as a battle of truth against lies,

56:07.720 --> 56:19.720
but as a lasting alliance pledged in faith with all those millions driving forward to create the true new order, the world order of the people first, the people before all.

56:19.720 --> 56:28.720
In a democratic society, the theory is that if the political leadership is committed to war, they present reasons and they got a very heavy burden of proof to meet

56:28.720 --> 56:33.720
because a war is a very catastrophic affair as it's been proved to be.

56:33.720 --> 56:42.720
The role of the media at that point is to present the relevant background, for example, the possibilities of peaceful settlement,

56:42.720 --> 56:52.720
such as what they may be have to be presented, and then to present, to offer a forum, in fact encourage a forum of debate over this very dread decision

56:52.720 --> 56:58.720
to go to war and in this case kill hundreds of thousands of people and leave two countries wrecked and so on.

56:58.720 --> 57:09.720
That never happened. There was never, well, you know, when I say never, I mean 99.9 percent of the discussion excluded the option of a peaceful settlement.

57:09.720 --> 57:16.720
Washington's Office of War Information calls one of the most vital and constructive tasks of this war.

57:16.720 --> 57:22.720
This is a people's war and to win it the people ought to know as much about it as they can.

57:22.720 --> 57:28.720
This office will do its best to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, for the home and the war.

57:28.720 --> 57:35.720
The first weapon in this worldwide strategy of truth is the great machine of information represented by the free press

57:35.720 --> 57:40.720
with its powers of molding public thought and leading public action,

57:40.720 --> 57:48.720
with all its lifelines for the exchange of new ideas between fighting nations spread across the earth.

57:48.720 --> 57:53.720
Every time George Bush would appear and say there will be no negotiations, there would be, you know,

57:53.720 --> 57:58.720
100 editorials the next day lauding him for going the last mile for diplomacy.

57:58.720 --> 58:05.720
If he said you can't reward an aggressor instead of cracking up and ridicule the way people did in civilized sectors of the world,

58:05.720 --> 58:12.720
like the whole third world, the media would say oh man, a fantastic principle, you know, the invader of Panama,

58:12.720 --> 58:20.720
the only head of state who stands condemned for aggression in the world, the guy who was head of the CIA during the Timor aggression, you know,

58:20.720 --> 58:23.720
he says aggressors can't be rewarded. The media just applauded.

58:23.720 --> 58:28.720
The motion picture industry with its worldwide organization of newsreel camera crews,

58:28.720 --> 58:35.720
invaluable for bringing into vivid focus the background drama and perspectives of the war.

58:35.720 --> 58:42.720
Mobilized too in this all out struggle for men's minds are the radio networks with all their experience

58:42.720 --> 58:46.720
and the swift reporting of great occasion and event.

58:46.720 --> 58:55.720
From every strategic center and front line stronghold, their reporters are sending back the lessons of new tactics, new ways of war.

58:55.720 --> 58:59.720
The result was it's a media war. There's tremendous fakery all along the line.

58:59.720 --> 59:05.720
The UN is finally living up to its mission, you know, wondrous sea change, the New York Times told us.

59:05.720 --> 59:13.720
The only wondrous sea change was that for once the United States didn't veto a Security Council resolution against aggression.

59:13.720 --> 59:18.720
People don't want a war unless you have to have one and they would have known that you don't have to have one.

59:18.720 --> 59:24.720
Well, the media kept people from knowing it and that means we went to war very much in the manner of a totalitarian state,

59:24.720 --> 59:29.720
thanks to the media subservience. That's the big story.

59:34.720 --> 59:38.720
Now, remember I'm not talking about a small radio station in Laramie.

59:38.720 --> 59:42.720
I'm talking about the national agenda setting media.

59:42.720 --> 59:50.720
If you're on a radio news show in Laramie, chances are very strong that you pick up what was in the Times that morning and you decide that's the news.

59:50.720 --> 59:57.720
In fact, if you follow the AP wires, you find that in the afternoon they send across tomorrow's front page of the New York Times.

59:57.720 --> 01:00:04.720
That's so that everybody knows what the news is and the perceptions and the perspectives and so on are sort of transmitted down,

01:00:04.720 --> 01:00:11.720
not to the precise detail, but the general picture is pretty much transmitted elsewhere.

01:00:11.720 --> 01:00:17.720
The foreign news comes here to the foreign news desk. The editor is Bob Hanley.

01:00:17.720 --> 01:00:21.720
Bob, I suppose you get far more foreign news than you can possibly use in the paper.

01:00:21.720 --> 01:00:26.720
Yes, we do. We get a great deal more than we can accommodate in a day.

01:00:26.720 --> 01:00:28.720
And your job is to weed it out, I suppose.

01:00:28.720 --> 01:00:39.720
This is the selection center, as it were, and when I have selected it, I pass it across the desk to one or the other of these sub-editors.

01:00:39.720 --> 01:00:46.720
It comes back to me and on this chart I design the page. That is page one and page two.

01:00:46.720 --> 01:00:53.720
Fine, Bob. Thank you very much.

01:00:53.720 --> 01:00:55.720
Why do you want to make a film about media?

01:00:55.720 --> 01:00:58.720
Well, it's a nice quiet town.

01:00:58.720 --> 01:01:00.720
It's a beautiful town.

01:01:00.720 --> 01:01:04.720
Well, we're making a film about the mass media, so we thought, what a good place to come.

01:01:04.720 --> 01:01:06.720
You want to know where they got the name.

01:01:06.720 --> 01:01:08.720
So maybe you could start by introducing yourself.

01:01:08.720 --> 01:01:14.720
Yes, I'm Bowden Senko. I'm the Main Street Manager and the Executive Director of the Media Business Authority.

01:01:14.720 --> 01:01:19.720
And we are in Media, Delaware County in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania.

01:01:19.720 --> 01:01:22.720
Media is called Everybody's Hometown.

01:01:22.720 --> 01:01:31.720
The motto was developed as a way to promote the community. We're a very high promotion-conscious community.

01:01:31.720 --> 01:01:39.720
When you walk through media, you'll be treated very well and you'll find that people have taken the idea of being Everybody's Hometown to heart.

01:01:39.720 --> 01:01:42.720
The local picker, the talk of the town.

01:01:42.720 --> 01:01:44.720
The town talk.

01:01:44.720 --> 01:01:45.720
Do you read that?

01:01:45.720 --> 01:01:46.720
Yes, I read the town talk.

01:01:46.720 --> 01:01:50.720
What do you think the difference is between the Wall Street Journal and the talk of the town?

01:01:50.720 --> 01:01:56.720
Well, the town talk is completely local news. It's fun, it's nice to read, it's interesting.

01:01:56.720 --> 01:01:59.720
You read about your neighbors and see what's going on in the school district, something like that.

01:01:59.720 --> 01:02:06.720
We're in business to make bucks, just like the big daily newspapers and just like the big radio stations, and we do quite well.

01:02:06.720 --> 01:02:09.720
And rightfully so, because we work very hard at it.

01:02:09.720 --> 01:02:12.720
I just want to show you a copy of the paper here, the way it is this week.

01:02:12.720 --> 01:02:19.720
It's plastic wrapped on all four sides, weatherproof, and hung on everybody's front door.

01:02:19.720 --> 01:02:24.720
And many, many times you'll find that this paper runs well over 100 pages a week.

01:02:24.720 --> 01:02:27.720
This particular edition, you have to remember there are five editions.

01:02:27.720 --> 01:02:32.720
This happens to be the Central Delaware County edition, which is the edition that covers media in Pennsylvania.

01:02:32.720 --> 01:02:35.720
What you see here now is the advertising and composition department.

01:02:35.720 --> 01:02:36.720
Say hello, guys, will you?

01:02:36.720 --> 01:02:37.720
Hi.

01:02:37.720 --> 01:02:38.720
Hi.

01:02:38.720 --> 01:02:46.720
And what we're doing now is we're putting red dots, green dots, and yellow dots up on the map, wherever there is a store.

01:02:46.720 --> 01:02:49.720
Now, the red dots are the stores that don't advertise with us at all.

01:02:49.720 --> 01:02:55.720
The green dots are the ones that advertise with us every week, and the yellow dots are the ones that run sporadically.

01:02:55.720 --> 01:03:03.720
Now, we have computer printouts of every one of these stores, and what we do is we take the printouts of all the red dots, which are the bad dots,

01:03:03.720 --> 01:03:10.720
and what our idea is is to turn these red dots into yellow dots and turn the yellow dots into green dots and eventually make them all green dots

01:03:10.720 --> 01:03:15.720
so 100 percent of the stores and 100 percent of the merchants and service people advertise in our newspaper every week.

01:03:15.720 --> 01:03:17.720
That way we won't have any more red dots.

01:03:17.720 --> 01:03:23.720
I guess there will always be a few red dots, but I have high hopes that there will be a lot more green ones than red ones when we're finished.

01:03:23.720 --> 01:03:24.720
Hi, I'm Jim Morgan.

01:03:24.720 --> 01:03:29.720
I'm with the Corporate Relations Department of the New York Times, and I'm here to take you on a tour of the New York Times.

01:03:29.720 --> 01:03:34.720
So, let's begin.

01:03:34.720 --> 01:03:37.720
So, they're just taking audio in here.

01:03:37.720 --> 01:03:39.720
Yeah, they're taking audio in here.

01:03:39.720 --> 01:03:40.720
Audio.

01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:42.720
No cameras, no still.

01:03:42.720 --> 01:03:44.720
We went over this quite thoroughly.

01:03:44.720 --> 01:03:48.720
They don't even take a still camera in here.

01:03:48.720 --> 01:03:49.720
We're in the composing room.

01:03:49.720 --> 01:03:51.720
This is where the pages are composed.

01:03:51.720 --> 01:03:53.720
This is the typographical area.

01:03:53.720 --> 01:03:57.720
What's the ratio of news to advertising?

01:03:57.720 --> 01:04:00.720
60 percent ads.

01:04:00.720 --> 01:04:06.720
This might seem big, but it is average, in fact, below average.

01:04:06.720 --> 01:04:15.720
Our 60 percent might include on some days maybe 20 pages of classified advertising all to itself,

01:04:15.720 --> 01:04:20.720
where the rest of the newspaper is weighted much heavier news to advertising.

01:04:20.720 --> 01:04:28.720
The paper in its entirety every day, large or small, is 60 ads, 40 news.

01:04:28.720 --> 01:04:34.720
Well, that completes our tour of the New York Times, and I hope you found it informative,

01:04:34.720 --> 01:04:44.720
and I hope that you read the New York Times every day of your life from now on.

01:04:44.720 --> 01:04:48.720
Now, there are other media, too, whose basic social role is quite different.

01:04:48.720 --> 01:04:50.720
It's diversion.

01:04:50.720 --> 01:04:57.720
There's the real mass media, the kinds that are aimed at the guys who, Joe Sixpack, that kind.

01:04:57.720 --> 01:05:01.720
The purpose of those media is just to dull people's brains.

01:05:01.720 --> 01:05:05.720
This is an oversimplification, but for the 80 percent, or whatever they are,

01:05:05.720 --> 01:05:11.720
the main thing for them is to divert them, to get them to watch National Football League,

01:05:11.720 --> 01:05:19.720
and to worry about a mother with a child with six heads or whatever you pick up in the thing

01:05:19.720 --> 01:05:27.720
that you pick up on the supermarket stands and so on, or look at astrology or get involved in fundamentalist stuff,

01:05:27.720 --> 01:05:32.720
or something, just get them away, get them away from things that matter.

01:05:32.720 --> 01:05:37.720
And for that, it's important to reduce their capacity to think.

01:05:37.720 --> 01:05:41.720
The sports section is handled in another special department.

01:05:41.720 --> 01:05:45.720
The sports reporter must be a specialist in his knowledge of sports.

01:05:45.720 --> 01:05:50.720
He gets his story right at the sporting event and often sends it into his paper play-by-play.

01:05:50.720 --> 01:05:56.720
They say sports, that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system, in my view.

01:05:56.720 --> 01:06:03.720
For one thing, because it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance.

01:06:03.720 --> 01:06:12.720
That keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives

01:06:12.720 --> 01:06:14.720
that they might have some idea about doing something about.

01:06:14.720 --> 01:06:22.720
And in fact, it's striking to see the intelligence that's used by ordinary people in sports.

01:06:22.720 --> 01:06:26.720
I mean, you listen to radio stations where people call in, they have the most exotic information

01:06:26.720 --> 01:06:30.720
and understanding about all kind of arcane issues.

01:06:30.720 --> 01:06:32.720
And the press undoubtedly does a lot with this.

01:06:32.720 --> 01:06:37.720
I remember in high school already, I was pretty old, I suddenly asked myself at one point,

01:06:37.720 --> 01:06:41.720
why do I care if my high school team wins the football game?

01:06:41.720 --> 01:06:47.720
I mean, I don't know anybody on the team, you know, that has nothing to do with me.

01:06:47.720 --> 01:06:52.720
I mean, why am I cheering for my team? It doesn't make any sense, you know.

01:06:52.720 --> 01:06:54.720
But the point is it does make sense.

01:06:54.720 --> 01:06:58.720
It's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority

01:06:58.720 --> 01:07:04.720
and, you know, group cohesion behind, you know, leadership elements.

01:07:04.720 --> 01:07:07.720
In fact, it's training in irrational jingoos.

01:07:07.720 --> 01:07:10.720
That's also a feature of competitive sports.

01:07:10.720 --> 01:07:15.720
I think if you look closely at these things, I think they have, typically they do have functions.

01:07:15.720 --> 01:07:21.720
And that's why energy is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for them

01:07:21.720 --> 01:07:23.720
and advertisers are willing to pay for them and so on.

01:07:23.720 --> 01:07:28.720
I'd like to ask you a question essentially about the methodology in studying the propaganda model

01:07:28.720 --> 01:07:31.720
and how would one go about doing that?

01:07:31.720 --> 01:07:34.720
Well, there are a number of ways to proceed.

01:07:34.720 --> 01:07:40.720
One obvious way is to try to find more or less paired examples.

01:07:40.720 --> 01:07:45.720
History doesn't offer true controlled experiments, but it often comes pretty close.

01:07:45.720 --> 01:07:42.560
So one can find atrocities or

01:07:42.560 --> 01:07:47.560
abuses of one sort that on the one hand are committed by official enemies

01:07:47.560 --> 01:07:51.560
and on the other hand are committed by friends and allies

01:07:51.560 --> 01:07:55.560
or by the favored state itself, by the United States in the U.S. case.

01:07:55.560 --> 01:07:58.560
And the question is whether the media accept the government framework

01:07:58.560 --> 01:08:02.560
or whether they use the same agenda, the same set of rules.

01:08:02.560 --> 01:08:05.560
And I think that's a very important question.

01:08:05.560 --> 01:08:12.560
The question is whether the media accept the government framework or whether they use the same agenda,

01:08:12.560 --> 01:08:16.560
the same set of questions, the same criteria for dealing with the two cases

01:08:16.560 --> 01:08:18.560
as any honest outside observer would do.

01:08:18.560 --> 01:08:22.560
If you think America's involvement in the war in Southeast Asia is over,

01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:23.560
think again.

01:08:23.560 --> 01:08:27.560
The Khmer Rouge are the most genocidal people on the face of the earth.

01:08:27.560 --> 01:08:32.560
Peter Jennings reporting from the killing fields, Thursday.

01:08:32.560 --> 01:08:37.560
I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Pol Pot.

01:08:37.560 --> 01:08:45.560
1975 through 1978, that atrocity, I think it would be hard to find any example

01:08:45.560 --> 01:08:50.560
of a comparable outrage and outpouring of fury and so on and so forth.

01:08:50.560 --> 01:08:52.560
So that's one atrocity.

01:08:52.560 --> 01:08:56.560
Well, it just happens that in that case, history did set up a controlled experiment.

01:08:56.560 --> 01:08:59.560
Have you ever heard of a place called East Timor?

01:08:59.560 --> 01:09:00.560
I can't say that I have.

01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:01.560
Where?

01:09:01.560 --> 01:09:02.560
East Timor?

01:09:02.560 --> 01:09:03.560
No.

01:09:03.560 --> 01:09:04.560
No, huh?

01:09:04.560 --> 01:09:07.560
Well, it happens that right at that time there was another atrocity,

01:09:07.560 --> 01:09:10.560
very similar in character, but differing in one respect.

01:09:10.560 --> 01:09:13.560
We were responsible for it, not Pol Pot.

01:09:13.560 --> 01:09:16.560
Hello, I'm Louise Penny and this is Radio Noon.

01:09:16.560 --> 01:09:20.560
If you've been listening to the program fairly regularly over the last few months,

01:09:20.560 --> 01:09:24.560
you'll know East Timor has come into the conversation more than once,

01:09:24.560 --> 01:09:29.560
particularly when we were talking about foreign aid and also the war and a new world order.

01:09:29.560 --> 01:09:32.560
People wondered why, if the UN was serious about a new world order,

01:09:32.560 --> 01:09:35.560
no one was doing anything to help East Timor.

01:09:35.560 --> 01:09:38.560
The area was invaded by Indonesia in 1975.

01:09:38.560 --> 01:09:42.560
There are reports of atrocities against the Timorese people,

01:09:42.560 --> 01:09:47.560
and yet Canada and other nations have consistently voted against UN resolutions

01:09:47.560 --> 01:09:49.560
to end the occupation.

01:09:49.560 --> 01:09:52.560
Today we're going to take a closer look at East Timor, what's happened to it,

01:09:52.560 --> 01:09:56.560
and why the international community is doing nothing to help.

01:09:56.560 --> 01:09:59.560
One of the people who have been most active is Elaine Bruyere,

01:09:59.560 --> 01:10:02.560
a photojournalist from British Columbia.

01:10:02.560 --> 01:10:07.560
She's the founder of the East Timor Alert Network, and she joins me in studio now. Hello.

01:10:07.560 --> 01:10:08.560
Hi.

01:10:08.560 --> 01:10:14.560
One tragedy compounding a tragedy is that a lot of people don't know much about East Timor.

01:10:14.560 --> 01:10:16.560
Where is it?

01:10:16.560 --> 01:10:20.560
East Timor is just north of Australia, about 420 kilometers,

01:10:20.560 --> 01:10:23.560
and it's right between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

01:10:23.560 --> 01:10:26.560
Just south of East Timor is the deep-water sea lane,

01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:29.560
perfect for U.S. submarines to pass through.

01:10:29.560 --> 01:10:32.560
There's also huge oil reserves there.

01:10:34.560 --> 01:10:38.560
One of the unique things about East Timor is that it's truly one of the last

01:10:38.560 --> 01:10:43.560
surviving ancient civilizations in that part of the world.

01:10:44.560 --> 01:10:52.560
The Timorese spoke 30 different languages and dialects amongst a group of 700,000 people.

01:10:52.560 --> 01:10:57.560
Today, less than 5% of the world's people live like the East Timorese,

01:10:57.560 --> 01:11:03.560
basically self-reliant. They live really outside of the global economic system.

01:11:07.560 --> 01:11:13.560
Small societies like the East Timorese are much more democratic and much more egalitarian,

01:11:13.560 --> 01:11:17.560
and there's much more sharing of power and wealth.

01:11:17.560 --> 01:11:23.560
Before the Indonesians invaded, most people lived in small rural villages.

01:11:28.560 --> 01:11:31.560
The old people in the village were like the university.

01:11:31.560 --> 01:11:35.560
They passed on tribal wisdom from generation to generation.

01:11:35.560 --> 01:11:48.560
Children grew up in a safe, stimulating, nurturing environment.

01:11:55.560 --> 01:12:00.560
A year after I left East Timor, I was appalled when I heard that Indonesia had invaded.

01:12:00.560 --> 01:12:05.560
They didn't want a small, independent country setting an example for the region.

01:12:07.560 --> 01:12:14.560
East Timor was a Portuguese colony. Indonesia had no claim to it, and in fact stated that they had no claim to it.

01:12:15.560 --> 01:12:22.560
During the period of colonization, there was a good deal of politicization that different groups developed.

01:12:22.560 --> 01:12:28.560
A civil war broke out in August of 1975.

01:12:42.560 --> 01:12:47.560
It ended up in a victory for Fredlund, which was one of the groupings,

01:12:47.560 --> 01:12:54.560
described as populist Catholic in character with some typical leftist rhetoric.

01:12:56.560 --> 01:12:58.560
Indonesia at once started intervening.

01:12:58.560 --> 01:13:01.560
What's the situation? When do those ships come in?

01:13:01.560 --> 01:13:08.560
They start arriving since Monday. Six, seven boats together very close to our border.

01:13:08.560 --> 01:13:12.560
They're just for fun, you know. They're preparing a massive operation.

01:13:12.560 --> 01:13:16.560
Something happened here last night that moved us very deeply.

01:13:16.560 --> 01:13:24.560
It was so far outside our experience as Australians that we'll find it very difficult to convey to you, but we'll try.

01:13:24.560 --> 01:13:29.560
Sitting on woven mats under a thatched roof in a hut with no walls,

01:13:29.560 --> 01:13:34.560
we were the target of a barrage of questioning from men who know they may die tomorrow

01:13:34.560 --> 01:13:38.560
and cannot understand why the rest of the world does not care.

01:13:38.560 --> 01:13:43.560
That's all they want, for the United Nations to care about what is happening here.

01:13:43.560 --> 01:13:48.560
The emotion here last night was so strong that we, all three of us,

01:13:48.560 --> 01:13:52.560
felt we should be able to reach out into the warm night air and touch it.

01:13:52.560 --> 01:14:09.560
Greg Shackleton is an unnamed village which we'll remember forever in Portuguese Timor.

01:14:09.560 --> 01:14:13.560
Ford and Kissinger visited Jakarta, I think it was December 5th.

01:14:13.560 --> 01:14:19.560
We know that they had requested that Indonesian soldiers go to the island

01:14:19.560 --> 01:14:24.560
We know that they had requested that Indonesia delay the invasion until after they left

01:14:24.560 --> 01:14:26.560
because it would be too embarrassing.

01:14:26.560 --> 01:14:31.560
Within hours, I think, after they left, the invasion took place on December 7th.

01:14:31.560 --> 01:14:39.560
What happened on December 7th in 1975 is just one of the great evil deeds of history.

01:14:39.560 --> 01:14:43.560
Early in the morning bombs began dropping on Dili.

01:14:43.560 --> 01:14:49.560
The number of troops that invaded Dili that day almost outnumbered the entire population of the town.

01:14:49.560 --> 01:15:17.560
And for two or three weeks they just killed people.

01:15:17.560 --> 01:15:24.560
This council must consider Indonesian aggression against Timor as the main issue of the discussion.

01:15:24.560 --> 01:15:33.560
When the Indonesians invaded, the UN reacted as it always does, calling for sanctions and condemnation and so on.

01:15:33.560 --> 01:15:51.560
Various water down resolutions were passed, but the US was very clearly not going to allow anything to work.

01:15:51.560 --> 01:15:55.560
So the Timorese were fleeing into the jungles by the thousands.

01:15:55.560 --> 01:16:03.560
By late 1977-78, Indonesia set up receiving centers for those Timorese who came out of the jungle waving white flags.

01:16:03.560 --> 01:16:12.560
Those the Indonesians thought were more educated or who were suspected of belonging to Fredline or other opposition parties were immediately killed.

01:16:12.560 --> 01:16:17.560
They took women aside and flew them off to Dili in helicopters for use by the Indonesian soldiers.

01:16:17.560 --> 01:16:21.560
They killed children and babies.

01:16:21.560 --> 01:16:29.560
But in those days their main strategy and their main weapon was starvation.

01:16:29.560 --> 01:16:33.560
By 1978 it was approaching really genocidal levels.

01:16:33.560 --> 01:16:38.560
The church and other sources estimated about 200,000 people killed.

01:16:38.560 --> 01:16:42.560
The US backed it all away. The US provided 90% of the arms.

01:16:42.560 --> 01:16:46.560
Right after the invasion, arms shipments were stepped up.

01:16:46.560 --> 01:16:54.560
When the Indonesians actually began to run out of arms in 1978, the Carter administration moved in and increased arms sales.

01:16:54.560 --> 01:17:05.560
And other western countries did the same. Canada, England, Holland, and everybody who could make a buck was in there trying to make sure they could kill more Timorese.

01:17:05.560 --> 01:17:13.560
There is no western concern for issues of aggression, atrocities, human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from them.

01:17:13.560 --> 01:17:19.560
Nothing could show it more clearly than this case.

01:17:19.560 --> 01:17:21.560
It wasn't that nobody had ever heard of East Timor.

01:17:21.560 --> 01:17:26.560
Crucial to remember that there was plenty of coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere before the invasion.

01:17:26.560 --> 01:17:32.560
The reason was that there was concern at the time over the breakup of the Portuguese Empire and what that would mean.

01:17:32.560 --> 01:17:37.560
There was a fear that they would lead to independence or Russian influence or whatever.

01:17:37.560 --> 01:17:40.560
After the Indonesians invaded the coverage dropped.

01:17:40.560 --> 01:17:45.560
There was some, but it was strictly from the point of view of the State Department and Indonesian generals.

01:17:45.560 --> 01:17:51.560
Never a Timorese refugee.

01:17:51.560 --> 01:18:00.560
As the atrocities reached their maximum peak in 1978, when it really was becoming genocidal, coverage dropped to zero in the United States and Canada.

01:18:00.560 --> 01:18:02.560
The two countries have looked at it closely.

01:18:02.560 --> 01:18:06.560
Literally dropped to zero.

01:18:06.560 --> 01:18:12.560
All this was going on at exactly the same time as the great protest of outrage over Cambodia.

01:18:12.560 --> 01:18:16.560
The level of atrocities was comparable in relative terms.

01:18:16.560 --> 01:18:22.560
It was probably considerably higher in Timor.

01:18:22.560 --> 01:18:36.560
It turns out right in Cambodia in the preceding years, 1970 through 1975, there was also a comparable atrocity for which we were responsible.

01:18:36.560 --> 01:18:41.560
The major US attack against Cambodia started with the bombings of the early 1970s.

01:18:41.560 --> 01:18:46.560
They reached a peak in 1973 and they continued up till 1975.

01:18:46.560 --> 01:18:49.560
They were directed against inner Cambodia.

01:18:49.560 --> 01:18:53.560
Very little is known about them because the media wanted it to be secret.

01:18:53.560 --> 01:18:58.560
They knew what was going on, they just didn't want to know what was happening.

01:18:58.560 --> 01:19:07.560
The CIA estimates about 600,000 killed during that five-year period, which is mostly either US bombing or a US-sponsored war.

01:19:07.560 --> 01:19:10.560
So that's pretty significant killing.

01:19:10.560 --> 01:19:23.560
Also, the conditions in which it left Cambodia were such that high US officials predicted that about a million people would die in the aftermath just from hunger and disease because of the wreckage of the country.

01:19:23.560 --> 01:19:34.560
Pretty good evidence from US government sources and the following sources that the intense bombardment was a significant force, maybe a critical force, in building up peasant support for the Khmer Rouge.

01:19:34.560 --> 01:19:37.560
Before that, it was a pretty marginal element.

01:19:37.560 --> 01:19:39.560
Well, that's just the wrong story.

01:19:39.560 --> 01:19:47.560
After 1975, atrocities continued and that became the right story because now they're being carried out by the bad guys.

01:19:47.560 --> 01:19:49.560
Well, it was bad enough.

01:19:49.560 --> 01:19:53.560
In fact, current estimates are that, well, you know, they vary.

01:19:53.560 --> 01:20:03.560
I mean, the CIA claimed 50 to 100,000 people killed and maybe another million or so who died one way or another.

01:20:03.560 --> 01:20:06.560
Michael Vickery is the one person who's given a really close detailed analysis.

01:20:06.560 --> 01:20:11.560
His figure is maybe 750,000 deaths above the normal.

01:20:11.560 --> 01:20:16.560
Others, like Ben Kiernan, suggest higher figures, but so far without a detailed analysis.

01:20:16.560 --> 01:20:19.560
Anyway, it was terrible, no doubt about it.

01:20:19.560 --> 01:20:25.560
Although the atrocities, the real atrocities, were bad enough, they weren't quite good enough for the purposes needed.

01:20:25.560 --> 01:20:32.560
Within a few weeks after the Khmer Rouge takeover, the New York Times was already accusing them of genocide.

01:20:32.560 --> 01:20:37.560
At that point, maybe a couple hundred or maybe a few thousand people had been killed.

01:20:37.560 --> 01:20:42.560
And from then on, it was a drum beat, a chorus of genocide.

01:20:49.560 --> 01:20:55.560
The big bestseller on Cambodia, Pol Pot, is called Murder in a Gentle Land.

01:20:55.560 --> 01:21:04.560
Up until April 17, 1975, it was a gentle land of peaceful, smiling people, and after that, some horrible holocaust took place.

01:21:04.560 --> 01:21:09.560
Very quickly, a figure of two million killed was hit upon.

01:21:09.560 --> 01:21:15.560
In fact, what was claimed was that the Khmer Rouge boasted of having murdered two million people.

01:21:15.560 --> 01:21:18.560
The facts are very dramatic.

01:21:18.560 --> 01:21:25.560
In the case of atrocities committed by the official enemy, extraordinary show of outrage.

01:21:25.560 --> 01:21:31.560
Exaggeration, no evidence required, faked photographs are fine, anything goes.

01:21:31.560 --> 01:21:39.560
Also, a vast amount of lying. I mean, an amount of lying that would have made Stalin cringe.

01:21:39.560 --> 01:21:48.560
It was fraudulent, and we know that it was fraudulent by looking at the response to comparable atrocities for which the United States was responsible.

01:21:50.560 --> 01:21:55.560
Early 70s Cambodia, Timor are two very closely paired examples.

01:21:55.560 --> 01:22:10.560
Well, the media response was quite dramatic.

01:22:25.560 --> 01:22:40.560
Back in 1980, I taught a course at Tufts University.

01:22:40.560 --> 01:22:43.560
Well, Chomsky came around to this class.

01:22:43.560 --> 01:22:54.560
He made a very powerful case that the press underplayed the fact that the Indonesian government annexed this former Portuguese colony in 1975.

01:22:54.560 --> 01:23:03.560
And that if you compare it, for example, with Cambodia where there was acreage of things, that this was a communist atrocity, whereas the other was not a communist atrocity.

01:23:03.560 --> 01:23:08.560
Well, I got quite interested in this, and I went to talk to the then deputy foreign editor of the Times.

01:23:08.560 --> 01:23:12.560
And I said, you know, we've had very poor coverage on this.

01:23:12.560 --> 01:23:15.560
And he said, you're absolutely right. There are a dozen atrocities around the world that we don't cover.

01:23:15.560 --> 01:23:18.560
This is one for various reasons. So I took it up.

01:23:18.560 --> 01:23:24.560
I was working as a reporter and writer for a small alternative radio program in upstate New York.

01:23:24.560 --> 01:23:29.560
And we received audio tapes of interviews with Timorese leaders.

01:23:29.560 --> 01:23:41.560
And we were quite surprised that given the level of American involvement, that there was not more coverage, indeed practically any coverage, of the large scale Indonesian killing in the mainstream American media.

01:23:41.560 --> 01:23:52.560
We formed a small group of people to try to monitor the situation and see what we could do over time to alert public opinion to what was actually happening in East Timor.

01:23:52.560 --> 01:24:02.560
There were literally about half a dozen people who simply dedicated themselves with great commitment to getting the story to break through.

01:24:02.560 --> 01:24:09.560
And they reached a couple of people in Congress. They got to me, for example. I was able to testify at the UN and write some things.

01:24:09.560 --> 01:24:12.560
They kept at it, kept at it, kept at it.

01:24:12.560 --> 01:24:18.560
Whatever is known about the subject is mainly comes from, essentially comes from their work. There's not much else.

01:24:18.560 --> 01:24:23.560
I wrote first an editorial called An Unjust War in East Timor.

01:24:23.560 --> 01:24:26.560
It had a map and it said exactly what had happened.

01:24:26.560 --> 01:24:30.560
We then ran a dozen other editorials on it.

01:24:30.560 --> 01:24:34.560
They were read, they were entered in the congressional record, and several congressmen then took up the cause.

01:24:34.560 --> 01:24:37.560
And then something was done in Congress as a result of this.

01:24:37.560 --> 01:24:45.560
The fact that the editorial page in the New York Times on Christmas Eve published that editorial put our work on a very different level.

01:24:45.560 --> 01:24:54.560
And it gave a great deal of legitimacy to something that we were trying to advance for a long time.

01:24:54.560 --> 01:25:00.560
And that was the idea and the reality that a major tragedy was unfolding in East Timor.

01:25:00.560 --> 01:25:08.560
If one takes literally the various theories that Professor Chomsky puts out,

01:25:08.560 --> 01:25:15.560
one would feel that there's a tacit conspiracy between the establishment press and the government in Washington

01:25:15.560 --> 01:25:19.560
to focus on certain things and ignore certain things.

01:25:19.560 --> 01:25:27.560
So that if we broke the rules, that we would instantly get a reaction, a sharp reaction from the overlords in Washington

01:25:27.560 --> 01:25:31.560
who would say, hey, what are you doing speaking up on East Timor?

01:25:31.560 --> 01:25:33.560
We're trying to keep that quiet. We didn't hear a thing.

01:25:33.560 --> 01:25:42.560
What we did hear, and this was quite interesting, is that there was a guy named Arnold Kohn, and he became a one-person lobby.

01:25:42.560 --> 01:25:47.560
I appreciate the nice things that Carl Meyer said about me in his interview,

01:25:47.560 --> 01:25:51.560
but I object to the notion that a one-man lobby was formed or anything like that.

01:25:51.560 --> 01:25:58.560
I think that if there weren't a large network composed of the American Catholic Bishops' Conference, composed of other church groups,

01:25:58.560 --> 01:26:05.560
composed of human rights groups, composed of simply concerned citizens and others, and a network of concern within the news media,

01:26:05.560 --> 01:26:08.560
I think that it would have been impossible to do anything at all at any time,

01:26:08.560 --> 01:26:13.560
and it certainly would have been impossible to sustain things for as long as they've been sustained.

01:26:13.560 --> 01:26:20.560
Professor Chomsky and a lot of people who engage in this kind of press analysis have one thing in common.

01:26:20.560 --> 01:26:25.560
Most of them have never worked for a newspaper. Many of them know very little about how newspapers work.

01:26:25.560 --> 01:26:35.560
When Chomsky came around, he had with him a file of all the coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other papers of East Timor,

01:26:35.560 --> 01:26:42.560
and he would go to the meticulous degree that if, for example, the London Times had a piece on East Timor,

01:26:42.560 --> 01:26:47.560
and then it appeared in the New York Times that if a paragraph was cut out, he'd compare and he'd say,

01:26:47.560 --> 01:26:52.560
look, this key paragraph right near the end, which is really what tells the whole story,

01:26:52.560 --> 01:26:55.560
was left out of the New York Times version of the London Times thing.

01:27:00.560 --> 01:27:04.560
There was a story in the London Times which was pretty accurate.

01:27:04.560 --> 01:27:08.560
The New York Times revised it radically. They didn't just leave the paragraph out.

01:27:08.560 --> 01:27:26.560
They revised it and gave it a totally different cast.

01:27:26.560 --> 01:27:31.560
It was then picked up by Newsweek, giving it the New York Times cast.

01:27:31.560 --> 01:27:37.560
It ended up being a whitewash, whereas the original was an atrocity story.

01:27:37.560 --> 01:27:46.560
So I said to Chomsky at the time, I said, well, it may be that you're misinterpreting ignorance, haste, deadline pressure, etc.,

01:27:46.560 --> 01:27:50.560
for some kind of determined effort to suppress an element of the story.

01:27:50.560 --> 01:27:56.560
He said, well, if it happened once or twice or three times, I might agree with you,

01:27:56.560 --> 01:28:00.560
but if it happens a dozen times, Mr. Meyer, I think there's something else at work.

01:28:00.560 --> 01:28:04.560
And it's not a matter of happening one time, two times, five times, a hundred times. It happens all the time.

01:28:04.560 --> 01:28:10.560
I said, Professor Chomsky, having been in this business, it happens a dozen times.

01:28:10.560 --> 01:28:13.560
These are very imperfect institutions.

01:28:13.560 --> 01:28:19.560
When they did give coverage, it was from the point of view of it was a whitewash of the United States.

01:28:19.560 --> 01:28:26.560
That's not an error. That's systematic, consistent behavior, in this case without even any exception.

01:28:26.560 --> 01:28:40.560
This is a much more subtle process than you get in the kind of the sledgehammer rhetoric of the people

01:28:40.560 --> 01:28:48.560
that make an A to B equation between what the government does, what people think, and what newspapers say.

01:28:48.560 --> 01:28:57.560
That sometimes what the Times does can make an enormous difference.

01:28:57.560 --> 01:29:01.560
At other times, it has no influence whatsoever.

01:29:01.560 --> 01:29:07.560
So one of the greatest tragedies of our age is still happening in East Timor.

01:29:07.560 --> 01:29:12.560
The Indonesians have killed up to a third of the population. They're in concentration camps.

01:29:12.560 --> 01:29:17.560
They conduct large-scale military campaigns against the people who are resisting,

01:29:17.560 --> 01:29:23.560
campaigns with names like Operation Eradicate or Operation Clean Sweep.

01:29:23.560 --> 01:29:27.560
Timorese women are subjected to a forced birth control program.

01:29:27.560 --> 01:29:34.560
In addition, they're bringing in a constant stream of Indonesian settlers to take over the land.

01:29:34.560 --> 01:29:40.560
Whenever people are brave enough to take to the streets and demonstrations or show the least sign of resistance,

01:29:40.560 --> 01:29:42.560
they just massacre them.

01:29:42.560 --> 01:29:48.560
It's sort of like Indonesia. If we allow them to continue to stay in East Timor, the international community,

01:29:48.560 --> 01:29:54.560
they will simply digest East Timor and turn it into, they're trying to turn it into cash crop.

01:29:54.560 --> 01:30:00.560
I mean, this is way beyond just demonstrating the subservience of the media to power.

01:30:00.560 --> 01:30:04.560
I mean, they are actual, they have real complicity in genocide in this case.

01:30:04.560 --> 01:30:09.560
The reason that the atrocities can go on is because nobody knows about them.

01:30:09.560 --> 01:30:14.560
If anyone knew about them, there'd be protests and pressure to stop them.

01:30:14.560 --> 01:30:20.560
So therefore, by suppressing the facts, the media are making a major contribution to some of the,

01:30:20.560 --> 01:30:25.560
probably the worst act of genocide since the Holocaust.

01:30:25.560 --> 01:30:32.560
You say that what the media do is to ignore certain kinds of atrocities that are committed by us and our friends

01:30:32.560 --> 01:30:38.560
and to play up enormously atrocities that are committed by them and our enemies.

01:30:38.560 --> 01:30:41.560
And you posit that there's a test of integrity and moral honesty,

01:30:41.560 --> 01:30:45.560
which is to have a kind of equality of treatment of corpses.

01:30:45.560 --> 01:30:46.560
Quality of principle.

01:30:46.560 --> 01:30:50.560
I mean, that every dead person should be in principle equal to every other dead person.

01:30:50.560 --> 01:30:51.560
That's not what I say at all.

01:30:51.560 --> 01:30:53.560
Well, I'm glad that's not what you say because that's not what you do.

01:30:53.560 --> 01:30:55.560
Of course it's not what I do, nor would I say it.

01:30:55.560 --> 01:30:57.560
In fact, I say the opposite.

01:30:57.560 --> 01:31:01.560
What I say is that we should be responsible for our own actions primarily.

01:31:01.560 --> 01:31:05.560
Because your method is not only to ignore the corpses created by them,

01:31:05.560 --> 01:31:08.560
but also to ignore the corpses that are created by neither side,

01:31:08.560 --> 01:31:11.560
but which are irrelevant to your ideological agenda.

01:31:11.560 --> 01:31:12.560
That's totally untrue.

01:31:12.560 --> 01:31:14.560
Well, let me give you an example.

01:31:14.560 --> 01:31:20.560
That one of your own causes that you take very seriously is the cause of the Palestinians.

01:31:20.560 --> 01:31:23.560
And a Palestinian corpse weighs very heavily on your conscience.

01:31:23.560 --> 01:31:26.560
And yet a Kurdish corpse does not.

01:31:26.560 --> 01:31:27.560
That's not true at all.

01:31:27.560 --> 01:31:31.560
I've been involved in Kurdish support groups for years.

01:31:31.560 --> 01:31:32.560
That's absolutely true.

01:31:32.560 --> 01:31:33.560
That's absolutely false.

01:31:33.560 --> 01:31:35.560
I've asked the Kurdish, asked the people who are involved,

01:31:35.560 --> 01:31:39.560
and I mean, you know, they come to me, I sign their petitions, and so on and so forth.

01:31:39.560 --> 01:31:43.560
In fact, if you look at the things we've written, I mean, take a look.

01:31:43.560 --> 01:31:45.560
I mean, I'm not Amnesty International.

01:31:45.560 --> 01:31:46.560
I can't do everything.

01:31:46.560 --> 01:31:48.560
I'm a single person.

01:31:48.560 --> 01:31:55.560
But if you read, say, take a look, say, at the book that Edward Herman and I wrote on this topic.

01:31:55.560 --> 01:32:01.560
In it we discuss three kinds of atrocities, what we called benign blood baths,

01:32:01.560 --> 01:32:05.560
which nobody cares about, constructive blood baths, which are the ones we like,

01:32:05.560 --> 01:32:09.560
and nefarious blood baths, which are the ones that the bad guys do.

01:32:09.560 --> 01:32:13.560
The principle that I think we ought to follow is not the one that you stated.

01:32:13.560 --> 01:32:16.560
You know, it's a very simple ethical point.

01:32:16.560 --> 01:32:21.560
You're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.

01:32:21.560 --> 01:32:25.560
You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions.

01:32:25.560 --> 01:32:31.560
The most important thing for me and for you is to think about the consequences of your actions.

01:32:31.560 --> 01:32:33.560
What can you affect?

01:32:33.560 --> 01:32:35.560
These are the things to keep in mind.

01:32:35.560 --> 01:32:37.560
These are not just academic exercises.

01:32:37.560 --> 01:32:42.560
We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that.

01:32:42.560 --> 01:32:49.560
We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving

01:32:49.560 --> 01:32:52.560
because of policies that we are involved in.

01:32:52.560 --> 01:32:57.560
We as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and are responsible for.

01:32:57.560 --> 01:33:03.560
And what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities

01:33:03.560 --> 01:33:09.560
and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people

01:33:09.560 --> 01:33:12.560
and not even the needs of the American people who would be horrified

01:33:12.560 --> 01:33:16.560
if they realized the blood that's dripping from their hands

01:33:16.560 --> 01:33:22.560
because of the way they're allowing themselves to be diluted and manipulated by the system.

01:33:39.560 --> 01:33:41.560
What about the third world?

01:33:41.560 --> 01:33:44.560
Well, despite everything, and it's pretty ugly and awful,

01:33:44.560 --> 01:33:47.560
these struggles are not over.

01:33:47.560 --> 01:33:52.560
The struggle for freedom and independence never is completely over.

01:33:58.560 --> 01:34:02.560
Their courage, in fact, is really remarkable and amazing.

01:34:02.560 --> 01:34:07.560
I've personally had the privilege, and it is a privilege, of witnessing it a few times

01:34:07.560 --> 01:34:13.560
in villages in Southeast Asia and Central America and recently in the occupied West Bank.

01:34:13.560 --> 01:34:16.560
And it is astonishing to see.

01:34:19.560 --> 01:34:23.560
And it's always amazing, at least to me it's amazing, I can't understand it.

01:34:23.560 --> 01:34:27.560
It's also very moving and very inspiring. In fact, it's kind of awe-inspiring.

01:34:27.560 --> 01:34:33.560
Now, they rely very crucially on a very slim margin for survival

01:34:33.560 --> 01:34:39.560
that's provided by dissidence and turbulence within the imperial societies.

01:34:39.560 --> 01:34:43.560
And how large that margin is, is for us to determine.

01:35:09.560 --> 01:35:11.560
The End

01:35:24.560 --> 01:35:29.560
In today's On the Spot assignment, we're going to see just what's behind the making of movies.

01:35:29.560 --> 01:35:33.560
The director and the crew are shooting a documentary film.

01:35:33.560 --> 01:35:35.560
Let's take a closer look.

01:35:35.560 --> 01:35:42.560
Bob, this word documentary, what would you say is the difference between a documentary film and a feature movie?

01:35:42.560 --> 01:35:45.560
Well, there are a good many differences. One would be length.

01:35:45.560 --> 01:35:49.560
Generally speaking, documentaries are a good deal shorter than feature films.

01:35:49.560 --> 01:35:55.560
Also, documentaries have something to say in the way of a message. They are informational films.

01:35:55.560 --> 01:36:00.560
Also, another term that's used interchangeably with documentary is the word actuality, actuality films.

01:36:00.560 --> 01:36:04.560
Bob, is this the thing you hold up in front of the camera before each scene?

01:36:04.560 --> 01:36:06.560
This is a clapperboard, yes.

01:36:06.560 --> 01:36:15.560
This identifies on the visual camera the scene number and the take number, and also, as you heard, on the soundtrack.

01:36:15.560 --> 01:36:22.560
The editor back at the studio puts the two pieces of film together, matches where the lips of the clapper come together, and there you are in sync.

01:36:22.560 --> 01:36:30.560
Before the break, you were mentioning the media putting forth the information that the Power Elite want.

01:36:30.560 --> 01:36:37.560
I'm not sure if I understand, how does the Power Elite do this, and why do we stand for it? Why does it work so well?

01:36:37.560 --> 01:36:41.560
Well, I think here we have to – there are really two questions here.

01:36:41.560 --> 01:36:44.560
One, is this picture of the media true? And there you have to look at the evidence.

01:36:44.560 --> 01:36:48.560
I mean, I've given one example, and that shouldn't convince anybody.

01:36:48.560 --> 01:36:51.560
One has to look at a lot of evidence to see whether this is true.

01:36:51.560 --> 01:36:56.560
I think anyone who investigates it will find out that the evidence to support it is simply overwhelming.

01:36:56.560 --> 01:37:00.560
In fact, it's probably one of the best-supported conclusions in the social sciences.

01:37:00.560 --> 01:37:02.560
But the other question is, how does it work?

01:37:02.560 --> 01:37:06.560
I'm the media guy.

01:37:06.560 --> 01:37:09.560
What do you like? I got you an international hero tribute.

01:37:09.560 --> 01:37:12.560
Do you want anything in a Western language?

01:37:12.560 --> 01:37:15.560
Do you want financial support?

01:37:15.560 --> 01:37:17.560
Yes, absolutely.

01:37:17.560 --> 01:37:19.560
That's the only paper that tells the truth.

01:37:19.560 --> 01:37:23.560
Did you get the one where they've been debating back before?

01:37:23.560 --> 01:37:25.560
NRC, Hundle's Blood.

01:37:25.560 --> 01:37:27.560
Hundle's Blood.

01:37:27.560 --> 01:37:47.560
Well, this evening's program is scheduled as a debate, which puzzled me all the way through.

01:37:47.560 --> 01:37:49.560
There are some problems.

01:37:49.560 --> 01:37:52.560
One problem is that no proposition has been set forth.

01:37:52.560 --> 01:37:56.560
As I understand debate, people are supposed to advocate something and oppose something.

01:37:56.560 --> 01:38:01.560
Rather more sensibly, a topic has been proposed for discussion.

01:38:01.560 --> 01:38:05.560
The topic is manufacture of consent.

01:38:05.560 --> 01:38:10.560
It's somewhat unusual for a member of the government to debate with a professor in public.

01:38:10.560 --> 01:38:20.560
It hasn't happened in Holland before. I don't think it often happens elsewhere.

01:38:20.560 --> 01:38:23.560
Mr. Boggstein, the floor is yours.

01:38:23.560 --> 01:38:28.560
Now, we all know that a theory can never be established merely by examples.

01:38:28.560 --> 01:38:34.560
It can only be established by showing some internal inherent logic.

01:38:34.560 --> 01:38:37.560
Professor Chomsky has not done so.

01:38:37.560 --> 01:38:38.560
Professor Chomsky?

01:38:38.560 --> 01:38:41.560
He's quite right when he says you can't just pick examples.

01:38:41.560 --> 01:38:43.560
You have to do them in a rational way.

01:38:43.560 --> 01:38:46.560
That's why we compared examples.

01:38:46.560 --> 01:38:52.560
The truth is that things are not as simple as Professor Chomsky maintains.

01:38:52.560 --> 01:38:59.560
Another of Professor Chomsky's case studies concerns the treatment that Cambodia has received in the Western press.

01:38:59.560 --> 01:39:03.560
Here he goes badly off the rails.

01:39:03.560 --> 01:39:07.560
We didn't discuss Cambodia.

01:39:07.560 --> 01:39:13.560
We compared Cambodia with East Timor to very closely paired examples.

01:39:13.560 --> 01:39:19.560
And we gave approximately 300 pages of detail covering this in Political Economy of Human Rights,

01:39:19.560 --> 01:39:24.560
including a reference to every article we could discover about Cambodia.

01:39:24.560 --> 01:39:34.560
Many Western intellectuals do not like to face the facts and balk at the conclusions that any untutored person would draw.

01:39:34.560 --> 01:39:41.560
Many people are very irritated by the fact that we exposed the extraordinary deceit over Cambodia

01:39:41.560 --> 01:39:48.560
and paired it with the simultaneous suppression of the US-supported ongoing atrocities in Timor.

01:39:48.560 --> 01:39:50.560
That people don't like that.

01:39:50.560 --> 01:39:54.560
For one thing we were challenging the right to lie in defense of the state.

01:39:54.560 --> 01:40:01.560
For another thing we were exposing the apologetics and support for actual ongoing atrocities.

01:40:01.560 --> 01:40:04.560
That doesn't make you popular.

01:40:04.560 --> 01:40:10.560
Where did he learn about the atrocities in East Timor or in Central America?

01:40:10.560 --> 01:40:14.560
If not in the same free press which he so derives.

01:40:14.560 --> 01:40:17.560
You can find out where I learned about them by looking at my footnotes.

01:40:17.560 --> 01:40:24.560
I learned about them from Human Rights reports, from Church reports, from Refugee studies and extensively from the Australian press.

01:40:24.560 --> 01:40:28.560
There was nothing from the American press because it was silenced.

01:40:28.560 --> 01:40:32.560
Chairman, this is an attempt at intellectual intimidation.

01:40:32.560 --> 01:40:36.560
These are the ways of the bully.

01:40:36.560 --> 01:40:40.560
Professor Chomsky uses the oldest debating trick on record.

01:40:40.560 --> 01:40:48.560
He erects a man of straw and proceeds to hack away at him.

01:40:48.560 --> 01:40:52.560
Professor Chomsky calls this the manufacture of consent.

01:40:52.560 --> 01:40:55.560
I call it the creation of consensus.

01:40:55.560 --> 01:41:00.560
In Holland we call it draagvlak, which means foundation.

01:41:00.560 --> 01:41:04.560
Professor Chomsky thinks it is deceitful, but it is not.

01:41:04.560 --> 01:41:11.560
In a representative democracy it means winning people for one's point of view.

01:41:11.560 --> 01:41:16.560
But I do not think that Professor Chomsky believes in representative democracy.

01:41:16.560 --> 01:41:19.560
I think he believes in direct democracy.

01:41:19.560 --> 01:41:28.560
With Rosa Luxemburg he longs for the creative, spontaneous, self-correcting force of mass action.

01:41:28.560 --> 01:41:31.560
That is the vision of the anarchist.

01:41:31.560 --> 01:41:35.560
It is also a boy's dream.

01:41:35.560 --> 01:41:43.560
Those who believe in democracy and freedom have a serious task ahead of them.

01:41:43.560 --> 01:41:51.560
What they should be doing, in my view, is dedicating their efforts to helping the despised common people

01:41:51.560 --> 01:41:58.560
to struggle for their rights and to realize the democratic goals that constantly surface throughout history.

01:41:58.560 --> 01:42:04.560
They should be serving not power and privilege, but rather their victims.

01:42:04.560 --> 01:42:09.560
Freedom and democracy are by now not merely values to be treasured.

01:42:09.560 --> 01:42:13.560
They are quite possibly the prerequisite to survival.

01:42:13.560 --> 01:42:18.560
It is a conspiracy theory, pure and simple. It is not borne out by the facts.

01:42:18.560 --> 01:42:28.560
Mr Chairman, I have to go to Amsterdam. If you'll excuse me, I'm leaving.

01:42:28.560 --> 01:42:38.560
One thing is sure. Their consent has not been manufactured tonight.

01:42:38.560 --> 01:42:46.560
There is nothing more remote from what I'm discussing or what we have been discussing than a conspiracy theory.

01:42:46.560 --> 01:42:55.560
If I give an analysis of, say, the economic system and I point out that General Motors tries to maximize profit and market share,

01:42:55.560 --> 01:43:00.560
that's not a conspiracy theory. That's an institutional analysis.

01:43:00.560 --> 01:43:05.560
There's nothing to do with conspiracies. And that's precisely the sense in which we're talking about the media.

01:43:05.560 --> 01:43:09.560
The phrase conspiracy theory is one of those that's constantly brought up.

01:43:09.560 --> 01:43:16.560
And I think its effect simply is to discourage institutional analysis.

01:43:16.560 --> 01:43:22.560
Do you think there's a connection somehow about what the government wants us to know and what the media tell us?

01:43:22.560 --> 01:43:28.560
It's not communism, but I think to a certain point it is sensitized.

01:43:28.560 --> 01:43:31.560
They don't always tell the truth the way it goes, huh?

01:43:31.560 --> 01:43:33.560
Got that right.

01:43:33.560 --> 01:43:37.560
Do you think that the information you're getting from this paper is biased in any way?

01:43:37.560 --> 01:43:38.560
Oh, yeah.

01:43:38.560 --> 01:43:45.560
I think by and large it's well done. You get both sides of the stories.

01:43:45.560 --> 01:43:50.560
You get the liberal and the conservative side, so to speak.

01:43:50.560 --> 01:43:56.560
But I don't think you get a very balanced picture because they only have 20 seconds, 30 seconds for a news item or whatever,

01:43:56.560 --> 01:44:03.560
and they're going to pick out a highlight, and every network is going to cover the same highlight, and that's all you're going to see.

01:44:03.560 --> 01:44:08.560
You get what they want you to hear.

01:44:08.560 --> 01:44:10.560
Do you think they're biased in some way, then?

01:44:10.560 --> 01:44:12.560
No.

01:44:12.560 --> 01:44:14.560
Here we go.

01:44:14.560 --> 01:44:23.560
See you later.

01:44:23.560 --> 01:44:29.560
Is it possible for the likes to get a little brighter and see somebody out there?

01:44:29.560 --> 01:44:36.560
Over the last hour and 41 minutes, we've been whining about how the elite and how the government have been using thought control

01:44:36.560 --> 01:44:41.560
to keep radicals like yourself out of the public limelight.

01:44:41.560 --> 01:44:45.560
Now, you're here. I don't see any CIA men waiting to drag you off.

01:44:45.560 --> 01:44:49.560
You were in the paper. That's where everyone here heard you were coming from, in the paper,

01:44:49.560 --> 01:44:52.560
and I'm sure they're going to publish your comments in the paper.

01:44:52.560 --> 01:44:56.560
Now, a lot of countries, you would have been shot for what you have done today.

01:44:56.560 --> 01:45:01.560
So what are you whining about? We are allowing you to speak, and I don't see any thought control.

01:45:01.560 --> 01:45:06.560
First of all, I haven't been saying – I haven't said one word about my being kept out of the limelight.

01:45:06.560 --> 01:45:08.560
The way it works here is quite different.

01:45:08.560 --> 01:45:15.560
Now, I don't think you heard what I was saying, but the way it works here is that there is a system of shaping, control, and so on,

01:45:15.560 --> 01:45:17.560
which gives a certain perception of the world.

01:45:17.560 --> 01:45:20.560
I gave one example. I'll give you sources where you can find thousands of others.

01:45:20.560 --> 01:45:22.560
That's – and it has nothing to do with me.

01:45:22.560 --> 01:45:28.560
It has to do with marginalizing the public and ensuring that they don't get in the way of elites

01:45:28.560 --> 01:45:31.560
who are supposed to run things without interference.

01:45:31.560 --> 01:45:39.560
In a review of the Chomsky Reader, it was written that as he's been forced to the margins, he's become strident and rigid.

01:45:39.560 --> 01:45:43.560
Do you feel this categorization of your later writings is accurate

01:45:43.560 --> 01:45:47.560
and that you've been a victim of this sort of process you've been describing?

01:45:47.560 --> 01:45:51.560
Well, the business about being forced to – other people will have to judge about the stridentcy.

01:45:51.560 --> 01:45:55.560
I won't talk about – I don't believe it, but anyway, that's for other people to judge.

01:45:55.560 --> 01:46:01.560
However, the matter of being forced to the margins is a matter of fact, and the fact is the opposite of what is claimed.

01:46:01.560 --> 01:46:07.560
The fact is it's much easier to gain access to even the major media now than it was 20 years ago.

01:46:07.560 --> 01:46:13.560
You've dealt in such unpopular truths and have been such a lonely figure as a consequence of that.

01:46:13.560 --> 01:46:18.560
Do you ever regret either that you took the stands you took, have written the things you have written,

01:46:18.560 --> 01:46:21.560
or that we had listened to you earlier?

01:46:21.560 --> 01:46:25.560
I don't. I mean, there are particular things which I would do differently,

01:46:25.560 --> 01:46:29.560
because you think about things differently, but in general I would say I do not regret it.

01:46:29.560 --> 01:46:31.560
Do you like being controversial?

01:46:31.560 --> 01:46:33.560
No, it's a nuisance.

01:46:33.560 --> 01:46:37.560
Because this mass medium pays little attention to the views of dissenters, not just Noam Chomsky,

01:46:37.560 --> 01:46:41.560
but most dissenters do not get much of a hearing in this medium.

01:46:41.560 --> 01:46:43.560
No, in fact, that's again completely understandable.

01:46:43.560 --> 01:46:49.560
They wouldn't be performing their societal function if they allowed favored truths to be challenged.

01:46:49.560 --> 01:46:55.560
Now, notice that that's not true when I cross the border anywhere,

01:46:55.560 --> 01:46:59.560
so that I have easy access to the media in just about every other country in the world.

01:46:59.560 --> 01:47:04.560
There's a number of reasons for that, and one reason is I'm primarily talking about the United States,

01:47:04.560 --> 01:47:06.560
and it's much less threatening.

01:47:06.560 --> 01:47:13.560
Your view there is that the militarization of the American economy has come about

01:47:13.560 --> 01:47:16.560
because there are not other means of controlling the American population.

01:47:16.560 --> 01:47:19.560
In a democratic society. I mean, it may be paradoxical,

01:47:19.560 --> 01:47:26.560
but the freer the society is, the more it's necessary to resort to devices like induced fears.

01:47:26.560 --> 01:47:31.560
Okay, I'll go along with that.

01:47:31.560 --> 01:47:35.560
Arguably, he is the most important intellectual alive today.

01:47:35.560 --> 01:47:42.560
And if my program can get him 500,000 people listening or three-quarters of a million people listening,

01:47:42.560 --> 01:47:44.560
I'll be delighted.

01:47:44.560 --> 01:47:47.560
Okay, Professor, then you're on time.

01:47:47.560 --> 01:47:56.560
Wartime planners understood that actual war aims should not be revealed.

01:47:56.560 --> 01:48:01.560
Part of the reason why the media in Canada and Belgium and so on are more open

01:48:01.560 --> 01:48:04.560
is that it just doesn't matter that much what people think.

01:48:04.560 --> 01:48:08.560
It matters very much what the politically articulate sectors of the population,

01:48:08.560 --> 01:48:12.560
those narrow minorities, think and do in the United States

01:48:12.560 --> 01:48:15.560
because of its overwhelming dominance on the world scene.

01:48:15.560 --> 01:48:18.560
But of course, that's also a reason for wanting to work here.

01:48:18.560 --> 01:48:23.560
What we might call the fifth freedom, the freedom to rob, exploit and dominate

01:48:23.560 --> 01:48:27.560
and to curb mischief by any feasible means.

01:48:30.560 --> 01:48:33.560
Let's conclude, not include.

01:48:37.560 --> 01:48:41.560
The United States is ideologically narrower in general than other countries.

01:48:41.560 --> 01:48:48.560
The more the structure of the American media is such as to pretty much eliminate critical discussion.

01:48:48.560 --> 01:48:54.560
Our guests are as far apart on the counter question as American intellectuals can be.

01:48:54.560 --> 01:48:57.560
Now, if we had the slightest concern with democracy,

01:48:57.560 --> 01:49:00.560
which we do not in our foreign affairs and never have,

01:49:00.560 --> 01:49:03.560
we would turn to countries where we have influence, like El Salvador.

01:49:03.560 --> 01:49:07.560
Now, in El Salvador, they don't call the archbishop bad names.

01:49:07.560 --> 01:49:09.560
What they do is murder him.

01:49:09.560 --> 01:49:12.560
They do not censor the press.

01:49:12.560 --> 01:49:14.560
They wipe the press out.

01:49:14.560 --> 01:49:16.560
They sent the army in to blow up the church radio station.

01:49:16.560 --> 01:49:21.560
The editor of the independent newspaper was found in a ditch mutilated and cut the pieces with machete.

01:49:21.560 --> 01:49:23.560
May I continue? I did not interrupt you.

01:49:23.560 --> 01:49:28.560
Don't you ever want to put a time value on anything you say or do you want to lie systematically on television?

01:49:28.560 --> 01:49:29.560
I'm talking about 1980.

01:49:29.560 --> 01:49:30.560
You are a systematic liar.

01:49:30.560 --> 01:49:32.560
Did these things happen or didn't they?

01:49:32.560 --> 01:49:35.560
These things did not happen in the context in which you suggested all of it.

01:49:35.560 --> 01:49:39.560
You are a phony, Mr., and it's time that the people read you great, correctly.

01:49:39.560 --> 01:49:42.560
It's clear why you want to divert me from the discussion that I'm having.

01:49:42.560 --> 01:49:44.560
No, it's not. It's because you get tired of rubbish.

01:49:44.560 --> 01:49:46.560
But let's continue with...

01:49:46.560 --> 01:49:48.560
Except we can't. I'm afraid we're out of time.

01:49:48.560 --> 01:49:50.560
We thank you both, John Silver and Noam Chomsky.

01:49:50.560 --> 01:49:51.560
Okay.

01:49:51.560 --> 01:50:02.560
Last time you were here, you spoke about how when you go overseas you are given access to the mass media.

01:50:02.560 --> 01:50:05.560
But here that doesn't seem to be the case.

01:50:05.560 --> 01:50:10.560
Has that changed at all? Have you ever been invited to appear on Nightline or Brinkley?

01:50:10.560 --> 01:50:15.560
Yes, I have a couple of times been invited to speak on Nightline.

01:50:15.560 --> 01:50:19.560
I couldn't do it. I had another talk and something or other.

01:50:19.560 --> 01:50:22.560
And to tell you the honest truth, I don't really care very much.

01:50:22.560 --> 01:50:27.560
FAIR, the media monitoring group, published a very interesting study of Nightline.

01:50:27.560 --> 01:50:53.560
It shows that their conception of a spectrum of opinion is ridiculously narrow, at least by European or world standards.

01:50:53.560 --> 01:50:55.560
Let me tell you a personal experience.

01:50:55.560 --> 01:51:01.560
I happened to be in Madison, Wisconsin, on a listener-supported radio station, a very good one.

01:51:01.560 --> 01:51:03.560
I was having an interview with the news director.

01:51:03.560 --> 01:51:06.560
I've been on that program dozens of times, usually by telephone.

01:51:06.560 --> 01:51:08.560
And he's very good. He gets to all sorts of people.

01:51:08.560 --> 01:51:21.560
And he started the interview by playing for me a tape of an interview that he had just had and had broadcast with the guy who's some mucky-muck in Nightline.

01:51:21.560 --> 01:51:27.560
I think his name is Jeff Greenfield or some such name. Does that name mean anything?

01:51:27.560 --> 01:51:31.560
I'm Jeff Greenfield from Nightline in New York.

01:51:31.560 --> 01:51:37.560
What about, just in the selection of guests, to analyze things, why is Noam Chomsky never on Nightline?

01:51:37.560 --> 01:51:39.560
I couldn't begin to tell you.

01:51:39.560 --> 01:51:42.560
He's one of the leading intellectuals in the entire world.

01:51:42.560 --> 01:51:45.560
I have no idea. I mean, I can make some guesses.

01:51:45.560 --> 01:51:51.560
He may be one of the leading intellectuals who can't talk on television.

01:51:51.560 --> 01:51:54.560
You know, that's a standard that's very important to us.

01:51:54.560 --> 01:52:01.560
If you've got a 22-minute show and a guy takes five minutes to warm up, now I don't know whether Chomsky does or not.

01:52:01.560 --> 01:52:02.560
He's out.

01:52:02.560 --> 01:52:12.560
One of the reasons why Nightline has the usual suspects is one of the things you have to do when you book a show is know that the person can make the point within the framework of television.

01:52:12.560 --> 01:52:20.560
And if people don't like that, they should understand it is about as sensible to book somebody who will take eight minutes to give an answer as it is to book somebody who doesn't speak English.

01:52:20.560 --> 01:52:26.560
But in the normal given flow, that's another culture bad thing. We've got to have English-speaking people. We also need concision.

01:52:26.560 --> 01:52:29.560
So Greenfield or whatever his name is hit the nail on the head.

01:52:29.560 --> 01:52:35.560
The U.S. media are alone in that you must meet the condition of concision.

01:52:35.560 --> 01:52:40.560
You've got to say things between two commercials or in 600 words.

01:52:40.560 --> 01:52:51.560
And that's a very important fact because the beauty of concision, you know, saying a couple of sentences between two commercials, the beauty of that is that you can only repeat conventional thoughts.

01:52:51.560 --> 01:52:58.560
I was reading Chomsky 20 years ago. I think his notion, doesn't he have a, doesn't he co-authored a new book called Engineering Consent or the Manufacturing of Consent?

01:52:58.560 --> 01:53:01.560
I mean some of that stuff to me looks like it's from Neptune.

01:53:01.560 --> 01:53:06.560
This is the first time the Neptune system has been seen clearly by human eyes.

01:53:06.560 --> 01:53:11.560
These pictures taken only hours ago by Voyager 2 are its latest contribution.

01:53:11.560 --> 01:53:16.560
You know, he's firmly entitled to say that I'm seeing it through a prism too.

01:53:16.560 --> 01:53:21.560
But my view of that, of his notions about the limits of debate in this country is absolutely wacko.

01:53:21.560 --> 01:53:30.560
Suppose I get up on Nightline, say, and I'm given whatever it is, two minutes, and I say, Kadhafi is a terrorist, Khomeini is a murderer, you know, etc., etc.

01:53:30.560 --> 01:53:37.560
The Russians, you know, invaded Afghanistan, all this sort of stuff. I don't need any evidence. Everybody just nods.

01:53:37.560 --> 01:53:42.560
On the other hand, suppose you say something that just isn't regurgitating conventional pieties.

01:53:42.560 --> 01:53:46.560
Suppose you say something that's the least bit unexpected or controversial.

01:53:46.560 --> 01:53:52.560
Suppose you say, I mean the biggest international terror operations that are known are the ones that have run out of Washington.

01:53:52.560 --> 01:53:57.560
Or suppose you say, what happened in the 1980s is the U.S. government was driven underground.

01:53:57.560 --> 01:54:02.560
Suppose I say the United States is invading South Vietnam, as it was.

01:54:02.560 --> 01:54:06.560
The best political leaders are the ones who are lazy and corrupt.

01:54:06.560 --> 01:54:14.560
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

01:54:14.560 --> 01:54:19.560
The Bible is probably the most genocidal book in our total canon.

01:54:19.560 --> 01:54:22.560
Education is a system of imposed ignorance.

01:54:22.560 --> 01:54:27.560
There's no more morality in world affairs fundamentally than there was in the time of Genghis Khan.

01:54:27.560 --> 01:54:31.560
There are just different factors to be concerned with.

01:54:31.560 --> 01:54:33.560
No, Chopsy, thank you.

01:54:33.560 --> 01:54:38.560
Well, you know, people will quite reasonably expect to know what you mean.

01:54:38.560 --> 01:54:41.560
Why did you say that? I never heard that before.

01:54:41.560 --> 01:54:44.560
If you said that, you better have a reason, you know, you better have some evidence.

01:54:44.560 --> 01:54:48.560
In fact, you better have a lot of evidence because that's pretty startling comment.

01:54:48.560 --> 01:54:52.560
You can't give evidence if you're stuck with concision, you know.

01:54:52.560 --> 01:54:55.560
That's the genius of this structural constraint.

01:54:55.560 --> 01:55:00.560
And in my view, if people like, say, Nightline and McNeil, Laird and so on were smarter,

01:55:00.560 --> 01:55:03.560
if they were better propagandists, they would let this in and so on.

01:55:03.560 --> 01:55:05.560
Let them on more, in fact.

01:55:05.560 --> 01:55:08.560
The reason is that they would sound like they're from Neptune.

01:55:08.560 --> 01:55:11.560
Then comes our special conversation on the Middle East crisis.

01:55:11.560 --> 01:55:14.560
Tonight's is with the activist writer and professor Noam Chomsky.

01:55:14.560 --> 01:55:20.560
Again, there is, has been an offer on the table, which we rejected, an Iraqi offer last April,

01:55:20.560 --> 01:55:25.560
to eliminate their chemical and other unconventional arsenals

01:55:25.560 --> 01:55:28.560
if Israel were to simultaneously do the same.

01:55:28.560 --> 01:55:29.560
I have to end it there.

01:55:29.560 --> 01:55:31.560
But I think that should be pursued as well.

01:55:31.560 --> 01:55:34.560
Sorry to interrupt you. I have to end it there. That's the end of our time.

01:55:34.560 --> 01:55:36.560
Professor Chomsky, thank you very much for joining us.

01:55:36.560 --> 01:55:42.560
AT&T has supported the McNeil-Laird NewsHour since 1983

01:55:42.560 --> 01:55:47.560
because quality information and quality communications is our idea of a good connection.

01:55:47.560 --> 01:55:50.560
AT&T, the right choice.

01:55:50.560 --> 01:55:53.560
Okay, could you just have a second?

01:55:53.560 --> 01:55:55.560
It's just for two shots, that's all, and we can do everything else.

01:55:55.560 --> 01:55:57.560
Okay.

01:55:57.560 --> 01:55:59.560
What about the mic?

01:55:59.560 --> 01:56:02.560
I think there's something hanging around here.

01:56:02.560 --> 01:56:05.560
Right, the idea of this one is it's just a shot where I'm seen talking to you

01:56:05.560 --> 01:56:06.560
and you're seen listening to me.

01:56:06.560 --> 01:56:08.560
I'll ask you, though, if you don't speak to me or move your lips

01:56:08.560 --> 01:56:11.560
so that I can be seen to be asking you a question.

01:56:11.560 --> 01:56:13.560
The reason for this shot is simply this.

01:56:13.560 --> 01:56:15.560
Okay, just don't talk to me and I'll keep going.

01:56:15.560 --> 01:56:16.560
That's the thing.

01:56:16.560 --> 01:56:17.560
The reason for this shot, I'll explain it through,

01:56:17.560 --> 01:56:19.560
because I usually find that's the easiest way to do it.

01:56:19.560 --> 01:56:22.560
The reason for this shot is I need a shot where you're sitting and seen

01:56:22.560 --> 01:56:24.560
listening to me while I'm asking you a question.

01:56:24.560 --> 01:56:26.560
We can use this shot to introduce you, explain who you are,

01:56:26.560 --> 01:56:28.560
where you fit into the piece I'm doing.

01:56:28.560 --> 01:56:30.560
But if you don't speak to me, I can also use...

01:56:30.560 --> 01:56:31.560
Got it.

01:56:31.560 --> 01:56:32.560
Okay, thanks for your time.

01:56:32.560 --> 01:56:33.560
Righto.

01:56:33.560 --> 01:56:36.560
If there is a narrow range of opinion in the United States

01:56:36.560 --> 01:56:41.560
and it is harder to express a variety of different opinions,

01:56:41.560 --> 01:56:43.560
why do you live in the U.S.?

01:56:43.560 --> 01:56:45.560
Well, first of all, it's my country,

01:56:45.560 --> 01:56:48.560
and secondly, it's in many ways, as I said before,

01:56:48.560 --> 01:56:50.560
it's the freest country in the world.

01:56:50.560 --> 01:56:52.560
I think there's more possibilities for change here

01:56:52.560 --> 01:56:54.560
than in any other country I know.

01:56:54.560 --> 01:56:56.560
Again, comparatively speaking,

01:56:56.560 --> 01:56:59.560
it's the country where the state is probably most restricted.

01:56:59.560 --> 01:57:01.560
But isn't that what you should be looking at comparatively

01:57:01.560 --> 01:57:03.560
rather than in absolute terms?

01:57:03.560 --> 01:57:04.560
Yes, I do.

01:57:04.560 --> 01:57:05.560
But you don't create that impression.

01:57:05.560 --> 01:57:06.560
Well, maybe I don't give the impression.

01:57:06.560 --> 01:57:08.560
I certainly say it often enough.

01:57:08.560 --> 01:57:10.560
What I've said over and over again,

01:57:10.560 --> 01:57:11.560
and I've been saying it all tonight,

01:57:11.560 --> 01:57:13.560
and I've written it a million times,

01:57:13.560 --> 01:57:15.560
is that the United States is a very free society.

01:57:15.560 --> 01:57:17.560
It's also a very rich society.

01:57:17.560 --> 01:57:19.560
Of course, the United States is a scandal

01:57:19.560 --> 01:57:21.560
from the point of view of its wealth.

01:57:21.560 --> 01:57:25.560
I mean, given the natural advantages that the United States has

01:57:25.560 --> 01:57:29.560
in terms of resources and lack of enemies and so on,

01:57:29.560 --> 01:57:32.560
the United States should have a level of health and welfare and so on

01:57:32.560 --> 01:57:36.560
that's an order of magnitude beyond anybody else in the world.

01:57:36.560 --> 01:57:37.560
We don't.

01:57:37.560 --> 01:57:41.560
The United States is last among 20 industrialized societies

01:57:41.560 --> 01:57:42.560
in infant mortality.

01:57:42.560 --> 01:57:45.560
That's a scandal of American capitalism.

01:57:45.560 --> 01:57:47.560
And it ends up being a very free society,

01:57:47.560 --> 01:57:49.560
which does a lot of rotten things in the world.

01:57:49.560 --> 01:57:50.560
Okay?

01:57:50.560 --> 01:57:51.560
There's no contradiction there.

01:57:51.560 --> 01:57:55.560
I mean, Greece was a free society by the standards of Athens.

01:57:55.560 --> 01:57:59.560
It's also a vicious society from the point of view of its imperial behavior.

01:57:59.560 --> 01:58:05.560
There's virtually no correlation between the internal freedom of a society

01:58:05.560 --> 01:58:07.560
and its external behavior.

01:58:07.560 --> 01:58:13.560
You start your line of discussion at a moment that is historically useful for you.

01:58:13.560 --> 01:58:15.560
That's why I say you pick the beginning.

01:58:15.560 --> 01:58:19.560
The grand fact of the post-war world is that the communist imperialists,

01:58:19.560 --> 01:58:23.560
by the use of terrorism, by the use of deprivation of freedom,

01:58:23.560 --> 01:58:27.560
have contributed to the continuing bloodshed.

01:58:27.560 --> 01:58:29.560
And the sad thing about it is not only the bloodshed,

01:58:29.560 --> 01:58:33.560
but the fact that they seem to dispossess you of the power of rationalization.

01:58:33.560 --> 01:58:34.560
May I say something?

01:58:34.560 --> 01:58:35.560
Sure.

01:58:35.560 --> 01:58:38.560
I think that's about 5% true, and about, or maybe 10% true.

01:58:38.560 --> 01:58:39.560
It certainly is true.

01:58:39.560 --> 01:58:40.560
Why do you give that?

01:58:40.560 --> 01:58:41.560
May I complete a sentence?

01:58:41.560 --> 01:58:42.560
Sure.

01:58:42.560 --> 01:58:44.560
It's perfectly true that there were areas of the world,

01:58:44.560 --> 01:58:52.560
in particular Eastern Europe, where Stalinist imperialism very brutally took control

01:58:52.560 --> 01:58:53.560
and still maintains control.

01:58:53.560 --> 01:58:58.560
But there were also very vast areas of the world where we were doing the same thing.

01:58:58.560 --> 01:59:00.560
And there's quite an interplay in the Cold War.

01:59:00.560 --> 01:59:04.560
You see, what you just described is a, I believe, a mythology about the Cold War,

01:59:04.560 --> 01:59:06.560
which might have been tenable ten years ago,

01:59:06.560 --> 01:59:08.560
but which is quite inconsistent with contemporary scholarship.

01:59:08.560 --> 01:59:10.560
Ask a Czech.

01:59:10.560 --> 01:59:13.560
Ask a Guatemalan. Ask a Dominican.

01:59:13.560 --> 01:59:14.560
Ask a person from the Dominican Republic.

01:59:14.560 --> 01:59:17.560
Ask a person from South Vietnam.

01:59:17.560 --> 01:59:18.560
You know, ask a Thai.

01:59:18.560 --> 01:59:20.560
Obviously, we can't get away if you can't distinguish

01:59:20.560 --> 01:59:24.560
between the nature of our venture in Guatemala and the nature of the Soviet Union in Prague.

01:59:24.560 --> 01:59:25.560
Then we have a real difficulty.

01:59:25.560 --> 01:59:26.560
Explain the difference.

01:59:26.560 --> 01:59:27.560
Sorry.

01:59:31.560 --> 01:59:35.560
Now, what about making the media more responsive and democratic?

01:59:35.560 --> 01:59:37.560
Well, there are very narrow limits to that.

01:59:37.560 --> 01:59:41.560
It's kind of like asking how do we make corporations more democratic.

01:59:41.560 --> 01:59:44.560
Well, the only way to do that is get rid of them, you know.

01:59:44.560 --> 01:59:49.560
I mean, if you have concentrated power, you can, I mean, I don't want to say you can do nothing.

01:59:49.560 --> 01:59:53.560
Like you can, you know, like the church can show up at the stockholders meeting

01:59:53.560 --> 01:59:57.560
and start screaming about not investing in South Africa.

01:59:57.560 --> 01:59:59.560
And sometimes that has marginal effects.

01:59:59.560 --> 02:00:00.560
I don't want to say it has no effects.

02:00:00.560 --> 02:00:03.560
But you can't really affect the structure of power,

02:00:03.560 --> 02:00:06.560
because if you, I mean, to do that would be a social revolution.

02:00:06.560 --> 02:00:09.560
And unless you're ready for a social revolution,

02:00:09.560 --> 02:00:11.560
that is power is going to be somewhere else,

02:00:11.560 --> 02:00:13.560
the media are going to have their present structure

02:00:13.560 --> 02:00:15.560
and they're going to represent their present interests.

02:00:15.560 --> 02:00:17.560
Now, that's not to say that one shouldn't try to do things.

02:00:17.560 --> 02:00:21.560
I mean, it makes sense to try to push the limits of a system.

02:00:21.560 --> 02:00:25.560
It only takes one or two people that think they have integrity as journalists

02:00:25.560 --> 02:00:27.560
to give you some good press.

02:00:27.560 --> 02:00:28.560
See, that's important.

02:00:28.560 --> 02:00:30.560
And that goes back to something that came up before.

02:00:30.560 --> 02:00:32.560
I mean, there's a lot, you know, there are contradi...

02:00:32.560 --> 02:00:34.560
You know, things are complex.

02:00:34.560 --> 02:00:36.560
It's not monolithic.

02:00:36.560 --> 02:00:40.560
I mean, the mass media themselves are complicated institutions with internal contradictions.

02:00:40.560 --> 02:00:44.560
So on the one hand, there's the commitment to indoctrination and control.

02:00:44.560 --> 02:00:48.560
But on the other hand, there's the sense of professional integrity.

02:00:48.560 --> 02:00:51.560
She works alone as her own boss,

02:00:51.560 --> 02:00:54.560
writing newspaper columns and producing radio commentaries

02:00:54.560 --> 02:00:57.560
for a hodgepodge of small clients across the country.

02:00:57.560 --> 02:01:01.560
This so-called leather-lung Texan has been firing questions

02:01:01.560 --> 02:01:04.560
at our chief executive for almost 40 years.

02:01:04.560 --> 02:01:08.560
And many a young man in this country is being disillusioned totally by his government these days.

02:01:08.560 --> 02:01:12.560
Well, this is a question which you very properly bring to the attention of the nation.

02:01:12.560 --> 02:01:15.560
It's not that we haven't been holding press conferences.

02:01:15.560 --> 02:01:18.560
I was just waiting for Sarah to come back.

02:01:18.560 --> 02:01:21.560
Mr. President, that's very nice of you, and I appreciate it.

02:01:21.560 --> 02:01:25.560
Sarah, I want to call to your attention a real problem we've got in this country today.

02:01:25.560 --> 02:01:28.560
Those unique and often terrifying McClendon questions

02:01:28.560 --> 02:01:30.560
reflect her desire to dig out information.

02:01:30.560 --> 02:01:33.560
And I want to ask your new man what he feels...

02:01:33.560 --> 02:01:35.560
What does he feel?

02:01:35.560 --> 02:01:37.560
Oh, my God.

02:01:37.560 --> 02:01:41.560
With enough know-how and persistence, she usually gets her man.

02:01:41.560 --> 02:01:46.560
What would you do if you were in a situation where you were trying to be an honest reporter

02:01:46.560 --> 02:01:50.560
and you were worried sick about your country and you saw how sick it was,

02:01:50.560 --> 02:01:57.560
and you were facing this weak White House and a weak Congress as a reporter?

02:01:57.560 --> 02:01:58.560
What would you do?

02:01:58.560 --> 02:02:00.560
I think there are a lot of reporters who do a very good job.

02:02:00.560 --> 02:02:04.560
In fact, I have a lot of friends in the press who I think do a terrific job.

02:02:04.560 --> 02:02:06.560
I know they are, but I mean, they want to.

02:02:06.560 --> 02:02:08.560
But now, what would you do if you were here?

02:02:08.560 --> 02:02:11.560
First of all, you have to understand what the system is.

02:02:11.560 --> 02:02:14.560
And smart reporters do understand what it is.

02:02:14.560 --> 02:02:17.560
You have to understand what the pressures are, what the commitments are,

02:02:17.560 --> 02:02:20.560
what the barriers are, and what the openings are.

02:02:20.560 --> 02:02:25.560
Like right after the Iran-Contra hearings, a lot of good reporters understood,

02:02:25.560 --> 02:02:27.560
well, things are going to be a little more open for a couple of months,

02:02:27.560 --> 02:02:31.560
so they could ram through stories that they knew they couldn't even talk about before.

02:02:31.560 --> 02:02:32.560
After Watergate.

02:02:32.560 --> 02:02:36.560
And the same after Watergate. And then, you know, it closes up again and so on.

02:02:36.560 --> 02:02:40.560
Most people, I imagine, simply internalize the values.

02:02:40.560 --> 02:02:42.560
That's the easiest way and the most successful way.

02:02:42.560 --> 02:02:45.560
You just internalize the values, and then you regard yourself, in a way,

02:02:45.560 --> 02:02:48.560
correctly as acting perfectly freely.

02:02:48.560 --> 02:02:50.560
All right, let's get to the White House now,

02:02:50.560 --> 02:02:56.560
where I think veteran correspondent Frank Sesno could tell us a little bit about self-censorship,

02:02:56.560 --> 02:02:59.560
that inertial guidance system is always going on.

02:02:59.560 --> 02:03:01.560
Is there any formal censorship there?

02:03:01.560 --> 02:03:03.560
Well, there's no self-censorship, Reid.

02:03:03.560 --> 02:03:08.560
If somebody tells me something, I'm going to pass it on, unless there's a particular and compelling reason not to.

02:03:08.560 --> 02:03:11.560
I can't deny that I wouldn't like to have access to the Oval Office

02:03:11.560 --> 02:03:14.560
and all the same maps and charts and graphs that the president's looking at,

02:03:14.560 --> 02:03:18.560
but that's not possible, it's not realistic, and it's probably not even desirable.

02:03:18.560 --> 02:03:26.560
Hello. How are you?

02:03:26.560 --> 02:03:27.560
I'm fine.

02:03:27.560 --> 02:03:29.560
Can I sit down there, please?

02:03:29.560 --> 02:03:31.560
Welcome to Holland.

02:03:31.560 --> 02:03:34.560
I'll introduce you first in a few lines.

02:03:34.560 --> 02:03:41.560
Professor Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, is now sixth and is about the most controversial intellectual in America.

02:03:41.560 --> 02:03:45.560
That's also a plattitude, but that's how it's always been called.

02:03:45.560 --> 02:03:48.560
Chomsky has been called the Einstein of modern linguistics.

02:03:48.560 --> 02:03:52.560
The New York Times has said he's arguably the most important intellectual alive today,

02:03:52.560 --> 02:03:55.560
but his presence here has sparked a protest.

02:03:55.560 --> 02:03:59.560
This book has poisoned the world and all liars in there,

02:03:59.560 --> 02:04:02.560
and as a Vietnamese people, we come here to learn the book.

02:04:02.560 --> 02:04:06.560
Vietnam! Vietnam!

02:04:06.560 --> 02:04:13.560
He said that in Vietnam there's no violation of human rights and no crime in Cambodia is wrong.

02:04:13.560 --> 02:04:18.560
Chomsky is using his profession, he's using that to poison the world,

02:04:18.560 --> 02:04:20.560
and we come here to protest that.

02:04:20.560 --> 02:04:23.560
I don't mind the denunciations, frankly. I mind the lies.

02:04:23.560 --> 02:04:27.560
I mean, intellectuals are very good at lying, but there are professionals at it.

02:04:27.560 --> 02:04:31.560
You know, vilification is a wonderful technique. There's no way of responding to it.

02:04:31.560 --> 02:04:36.560
If somebody calls you an anti-Semite, what can you say? I'm not an anti-Semite.

02:04:36.560 --> 02:04:39.560
Somebody says you're a racist, you're a Nazi or something.

02:04:39.560 --> 02:04:42.560
You always lose. I mean, the person who throws the mud always wins,

02:04:42.560 --> 02:04:45.560
because there's no way of responding to such charges.

02:04:45.560 --> 02:04:54.560
Professor Chomsky seems to believe that the people he criticizes fall into one of two classes, liars or dupes.

02:04:54.560 --> 02:05:01.560
Consider what happened when I discussed the case of Robert Fourisson. Let me recall the facts.

02:05:01.560 --> 02:05:04.560
Let's not go into details, please, because...

02:05:04.560 --> 02:05:06.560
The details happen to be important.

02:05:06.560 --> 02:05:08.560
Yes, but I have only one question on the Fourisson question.

02:05:08.560 --> 02:05:10.560
Do the facts matter or don't they matter?

02:05:10.560 --> 02:05:11.560
Of course they do.

02:05:11.560 --> 02:05:13.560
Well, let me tell you what the facts are then.

02:05:13.560 --> 02:05:19.560
Fourisson says that the massacre of the Jews in the Holocaust is a historic lie.

02:05:19.560 --> 02:05:22.560
Can we have the next question?

02:05:22.560 --> 02:05:26.560
This is an important one. I have a lot to do with the topic.

02:05:26.560 --> 02:05:32.560
Your views are extremely controversial, and perhaps one of the things that has been most controversial

02:05:32.560 --> 02:05:36.560
and you've been most strongly criticized for was your defense of a French intellectual

02:05:36.560 --> 02:05:44.560
who was suspended from his university post for contending that there were no Nazi death camps in World War II.

02:05:44.560 --> 02:05:51.560
My name is Robert Fourisson. I am 60. I am university professor in Lyon, France.

02:05:51.560 --> 02:05:58.560
Behind me you may see the courthouse of Paris, the Palais de Justice.

02:05:58.560 --> 02:06:06.560
In this place I was convicted many times at the beginning of the 80s.

02:06:06.560 --> 02:06:14.560
I was charged by nine associations, mostly Jewish associations.

02:06:14.560 --> 02:06:29.560
For inciting hatred, racial hatred, for racial defamation, for damage by falsifying a story.

02:06:29.560 --> 02:06:36.560
Professor Chomsky and a number of other intellectuals signed a petition in which Fourisson is called

02:06:36.560 --> 02:06:44.560
a respected professor of literature who merely tried to make his findings public.

02:06:44.560 --> 02:06:54.560
Perhaps we can start with just the story of Robert Fourisson and your involvement.

02:06:54.560 --> 02:07:07.560
More than 500 people signed, maybe 600, mostly university students.

02:07:07.560 --> 02:07:14.560
What happened to the other 499 of them? How come we only hear about Chomsky's signature?

02:07:14.560 --> 02:07:22.560
Well, I think it's because Chomsky has in himself a kind of political power.

02:07:22.560 --> 02:07:27.560
I signed a petition calling on the tribunal to defend his civil rights.

02:07:27.560 --> 02:07:31.560
At that point the French press, which apparently has no conception of freedom of speech,

02:07:31.560 --> 02:07:37.560
concluded that since I had called for his civil rights I was there for defending his theses.

02:07:37.560 --> 02:07:45.560
Fourisson then published a book in which he tried to prove that the Nazi gas chambers never existed.

02:07:45.560 --> 02:07:55.560
What we deny is that there was an extermination program and an extermination actually,

02:07:55.560 --> 02:07:59.560
especially in gas chambers or gas vans.

02:07:59.560 --> 02:08:05.560
The book contains a preface written by Professor Chomsky in which he calls Fourisson

02:08:05.560 --> 02:08:11.560
a relatively apolitical sort of liberal.

02:08:11.560 --> 02:08:17.560
A communist is a man, a Jew is a man, a Nazi is a man, I am a man.

02:08:17.560 --> 02:08:19.560
Are you a Nazi?

02:08:19.560 --> 02:08:21.560
I am not a Nazi.

02:08:21.560 --> 02:08:25.560
How would you describe yourself politically?

02:08:25.560 --> 02:08:27.560
Nothing.

02:08:27.560 --> 02:08:29.560
The preface that you wrote, whether you reflected it...

02:08:29.560 --> 02:08:32.560
No, that's not the preface that I wrote because I never wrote a preface.

02:08:32.560 --> 02:08:35.560
And you know that I never wrote a preface.

02:08:35.560 --> 02:08:43.560
He's referring to a statement of mine on civil liberties which was added to a book in which Fourisson...

02:08:43.560 --> 02:08:45.560
Excuse me.

02:08:45.560 --> 02:08:48.560
You are a linguist and the language you use has meaning.

02:08:48.560 --> 02:08:49.560
That's right.

02:08:49.560 --> 02:08:51.560
And the language I use...

02:08:51.560 --> 02:08:57.560
...as apolitical liberal or as someone whose views can be signified by the words findings or conclusions.

02:08:57.560 --> 02:09:01.560
That is a judgment and that is a favorable judgment of his youth.

02:09:01.560 --> 02:09:02.560
On the contrary.

02:09:02.560 --> 02:09:04.560
Can I continue with the fact?

02:09:04.560 --> 02:09:06.560
Yes, you can continue with the fact for hours.

02:09:06.560 --> 02:09:08.560
But they are futile.

02:09:08.560 --> 02:09:11.560
Let's get to the so-called preface.

02:09:11.560 --> 02:09:17.560
I was then asked by the person who organized the petition to write a statement on freedom of speech.

02:09:17.560 --> 02:09:27.560
Just banal comments about freedom of speech, pointing out the difference between defending a person's right to express his views and defending the views expressed.

02:09:27.560 --> 02:09:28.560
So I did that.

02:09:28.560 --> 02:09:33.560
I wrote a rather banal statement called Some Elementary Remarks on Freedom of Expression.

02:09:33.560 --> 02:09:36.560
And I told him, do what you like with it.

02:09:36.560 --> 02:09:44.560
So Pierre produced a book which all the arguments of Fourisson were to be put in front of the court.

02:09:44.560 --> 02:09:59.560
And we thought wise to use the text of Noam Chomsky as a kind of warning, a foreword, to say that it was a matter of freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of reserve.

02:09:59.560 --> 02:10:02.560
Why did you try at the last moment to get it back from the book?

02:10:02.560 --> 02:10:04.560
That's the one thing I'm sorry about.

02:10:04.560 --> 02:10:06.560
But that's the real important thing.

02:10:06.560 --> 02:10:07.560
No, it's not.

02:10:07.560 --> 02:10:08.560
It's not.

02:10:08.560 --> 02:10:11.560
Because with that you said it was wrong of you to do it.

02:10:11.560 --> 02:10:12.560
No, I didn't.

02:10:12.560 --> 02:10:13.560
See, in fact, take a look at what I did.

02:10:13.560 --> 02:10:24.560
I wrote a letter which was then published by us in which I said, look, things have reached the point where the French intellectual community simply is incapable of understanding the issues.

02:10:24.560 --> 02:10:33.560
At this point it's just going to confuse matters even more if my comments on freedom of speech happen to be attached to this book which I didn't know existed.

02:10:33.560 --> 02:10:35.560
So just to clarify things, you better separate them.

02:10:35.560 --> 02:10:38.560
Now, in retrospect, I think I probably shouldn't have done that.

02:10:38.560 --> 02:10:42.560
I should have just said, fine, then let it appear because it ought to appear.

02:10:42.560 --> 02:10:51.560
But apart from that, I regard this as not only trivial but as compared with other positions I've taken on freedom of speech, invisible.

02:10:51.560 --> 02:10:57.560
I do not think that the state ought to have the right to determine historical truth and to punish people with deviation.

02:10:57.560 --> 02:11:01.560
I'm not willing to give the state that right even if they happen to fall which way.

02:11:01.560 --> 02:11:03.560
But are you denying that the gas chambers ever existed?

02:11:03.560 --> 02:11:08.560
But I'm saying if you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like.

02:11:08.560 --> 02:11:12.560
I mean, Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked.

02:11:12.560 --> 02:11:13.560
So was Stalin.

02:11:13.560 --> 02:11:20.560
If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.

02:11:20.560 --> 02:11:22.560
Otherwise, you're not in favor of freedom of speech.

02:11:22.560 --> 02:11:24.560
There's two positions you can have on freedom of speech.

02:11:24.560 --> 02:11:26.560
And you can decide which position you want.

02:11:26.560 --> 02:11:33.560
With regard to my defense of the utterly offensive, the people who express utterly offensive views,

02:11:33.560 --> 02:11:38.560
I have the slightest doubt that every commissar says you're defending that person's views.

02:11:38.560 --> 02:11:40.560
No, I'm not. I'm defending his right to express them.

02:11:40.560 --> 02:11:47.560
The difference is crucial and the difference has been understood outside of fascist circles since the 18th century.

02:11:47.560 --> 02:11:52.560
Is there anything like scientific objectivity, reality as a scientist?

02:11:52.560 --> 02:11:54.560
Look, I'm not saying I defend the views.

02:11:54.560 --> 02:12:01.560
Look, if somebody publishes a scientific article, which I disagree with, I do not say the state ought to put him in jail.

02:12:01.560 --> 02:12:04.560
All right, but you don't have to support him right away.

02:12:04.560 --> 02:12:05.560
I don't support him.

02:12:05.560 --> 02:12:08.560
I support him just for the sake of the people saying that whatever he wants is fair.

02:12:08.560 --> 02:12:13.560
Fine, but suppose this guy is taken to court and charged with falsification.

02:12:13.560 --> 02:12:15.560
Then I'm going to defend him even if I disagree with him.

02:12:15.560 --> 02:12:17.560
That's right, but he wasn't taken to court.

02:12:17.560 --> 02:12:18.560
Oh, you're wrong.

02:12:18.560 --> 02:12:20.560
But when did you write the support?

02:12:20.560 --> 02:12:22.560
When he was brought to court.

02:12:22.560 --> 02:12:27.560
In fact, the only support that I gave him is to say he has a right of freedom of speech, period.

02:12:27.560 --> 02:12:33.560
There is no doubt in my mind that the example that I gave about the story is the Holocaust that did not exist.

02:12:33.560 --> 02:12:35.560
It's very, very typical.

02:12:35.560 --> 02:12:36.560
I'll give you another example about the history.

02:12:36.560 --> 02:12:40.560
How much of the American press believes that Henri Saint has anything to say or any press?

02:12:40.560 --> 02:12:42.560
How much of the press in France?

02:12:42.560 --> 02:12:43.560
Since I followed Sylvain.

02:12:43.560 --> 02:12:44.560
What percentage would you say?

02:12:44.560 --> 02:12:45.560
I'll tell you.

02:12:45.560 --> 02:12:46.560
Is it higher than zero?

02:12:46.560 --> 02:12:47.560
I don't know.

02:12:47.560 --> 02:12:48.560
Is it higher than zero?

02:12:48.560 --> 02:12:49.560
I'll tell you.

02:12:49.560 --> 02:12:53.560
Have you ever seen anything in any newspaper or any journal saying that this man is anything other than a lunatic?

02:12:53.560 --> 02:12:54.560
I'll try to answer.

02:12:54.560 --> 02:12:55.560
I'll try to answer.

02:12:55.560 --> 02:12:57.560
I think that I just followed the case.

02:12:57.560 --> 02:12:58.560
That's a simple question.

02:12:58.560 --> 02:13:05.560
I followed the case five or six years ago, and I happened to see that Noam Chomsky was in for strong criticism,

02:13:05.560 --> 02:13:12.560
even from some of his supporters, for doing something which could be interpreted only in terms of a campaign against Israel.

02:13:12.560 --> 02:13:22.560
Going back years, I am absolutely certain that I've taken far more extreme positions on people who deny the Holocaust than you have.

02:13:22.560 --> 02:13:29.560
For example, you go back to my earliest articles, and you'll find that I say that even to enter into the arena of debate

02:13:29.560 --> 02:13:36.560
on the question of whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity.

02:13:36.560 --> 02:13:39.560
So I don't even think you ought to discuss the issue if you want to know my opinion.

02:13:39.560 --> 02:13:44.560
But if anybody wants to refute Faurisson, there's certainly no difficulty in doing so.

02:14:00.560 --> 02:14:05.560
I'm not interested in freedom of speech and all that.

02:14:05.560 --> 02:14:10.560
I have to win, and that's the question. And I shall win.

02:14:36.560 --> 02:14:44.560
I'm just an ordinary mom who just thinks in terms of I don't want to someday be holding my grandchildren

02:14:44.560 --> 02:14:49.560
and watching something horrible happen and feel like I didn't do anything.

02:14:49.560 --> 02:14:53.560
And I mean, it's obvious what you're doing.

02:14:53.560 --> 02:15:00.560
And my question is, on a practical level, where do you see the most practical place to put your energy?

02:15:00.560 --> 02:15:07.560
I mean, tonight I feel overwhelmed. I feel like it's too big, it's too much to even make a dent in.

02:15:07.560 --> 02:15:12.560
The way things change is because lots of people are working all the time.

02:15:12.560 --> 02:15:16.560
And they're working in their communities, in their workplace, or wherever they happen to be.

02:15:16.560 --> 02:15:22.560
And they're building up the basis for popular movements which are going to make changes.

02:15:22.560 --> 02:15:25.560
That's the way everything has ever happened in history,

02:15:25.560 --> 02:15:32.560
whether it was the end of slavery or whether it was the democratic revolutions or anything you want, you name it.

02:15:32.560 --> 02:15:34.560
That's the way it worked.

02:15:34.560 --> 02:15:37.560
You get a very false picture of this from the history books.

02:15:37.560 --> 02:15:45.560
In the history books there's a couple of leaders, you know, George Washington or Martin Luther King or whatever.

02:15:45.560 --> 02:15:48.560
And I don't want to say that those people are unimportant.

02:15:48.560 --> 02:15:52.560
Martin Luther King was certainly important, but he was not the civil rights movement.

02:15:52.560 --> 02:15:58.560
Martin Luther King can appear in the history books because lots of people whose names you will never know

02:15:58.560 --> 02:16:04.560
and whose names are all forgotten and who may have been killed and so on were working down in the South.

02:16:06.560 --> 02:16:12.560
When you have active activists and people concerned and people devoting themselves

02:16:12.560 --> 02:16:19.560
and dedicating themselves to social change or issues or whatever, then people like me can appear.

02:16:19.560 --> 02:16:23.560
And we can appear to be prominent, but that's not because somebody else is doing the work.

02:16:23.560 --> 02:16:31.560
My work, whether it's giving hundreds of talks a year or spending 20 hours a week writing letters or writing books,

02:16:31.560 --> 02:16:35.560
is not directed to intellectuals and politicians.

02:16:35.560 --> 02:16:39.560
It's directed to what are called ordinary people.

02:16:39.560 --> 02:16:44.560
And what I expect from them is in fact exactly what they are,

02:16:44.560 --> 02:16:50.560
that they should try to understand the world and act in accordance with their decent impulses

02:16:50.560 --> 02:16:53.560
and that they should try to improve the world.

02:16:53.560 --> 02:16:55.560
And many people are willing to do that, but they have to understand.

02:16:55.560 --> 02:16:58.560
And in fact as far as I can see in these things,

02:16:58.560 --> 02:17:03.560
I feel that I'm simply helping people develop courses of intellectual self-defense.

02:17:03.560 --> 02:17:08.560
What did you mean by that? What would such a course be?

02:17:08.560 --> 02:17:11.560
I don't mean go to school because we're not going to get it there.

02:17:11.560 --> 02:17:17.560
It means you have to develop an independent mind and work on it.

02:17:17.560 --> 02:17:20.560
Now that's extremely hard to do alone.

02:17:20.560 --> 02:17:24.560
The beauty of our system is it isolates everybody.

02:17:24.560 --> 02:17:27.560
Each person is sitting alone in front of the two.

02:17:27.560 --> 02:17:31.560
It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances.

02:17:31.560 --> 02:17:33.560
You can't fight the world alone.

02:17:33.560 --> 02:17:36.560
Some people can, but it's pretty rare.

02:17:36.560 --> 02:17:38.560
The way to do it is through organization.

02:17:38.560 --> 02:17:48.560
So courses of intellectual self-defense will have to be in the context of political and other organizations.

02:17:48.560 --> 02:17:52.560
And it makes sense, I think, to look at what the institutions are trying to do

02:17:52.560 --> 02:17:54.560
and to take that almost as a key.

02:17:54.560 --> 02:17:57.560
What they're trying to do is what we're trying to combat.

02:17:57.560 --> 02:18:01.560
If they're trying to keep people isolated and separate and so on,

02:18:01.560 --> 02:18:04.560
well, we're trying to do the opposite. We're trying to bring them together.

02:18:04.560 --> 02:18:10.560
So in your local community, you want to have sources of alternative action.

02:18:10.560 --> 02:18:13.560
People with parallel concerns may be differently focused,

02:18:13.560 --> 02:18:18.560
but at the core, sort of similar values and a similar interest in helping people

02:18:18.560 --> 02:18:23.560
learn how to defend themselves against external power and taking control of their lives

02:18:23.560 --> 02:18:25.560
and reaching out your hand to people who need it.

02:18:25.560 --> 02:18:28.560
That's a common array of concerns.

02:18:28.560 --> 02:18:32.560
You can learn about your own values and you can figure out how to defend yourself and so on

02:18:32.560 --> 02:18:34.560
in conjunction with others.

02:18:34.560 --> 02:18:39.560
Are there one or two publications that I, as an average person, a biologist,

02:18:39.560 --> 02:18:43.560
can read to bypass this filter of our press?

02:18:43.560 --> 02:18:47.560
Now, if you ask what media can I turn to to get the right answers,

02:18:47.560 --> 02:18:51.560
first of all, I wouldn't tell you that because I don't think there's an answer.

02:18:51.560 --> 02:18:54.560
The right answers are what you decide are the right answers.

02:18:54.560 --> 02:18:56.560
Maybe everything I'm telling you is wrong.

02:18:56.560 --> 02:18:59.560
Okay? Could perfectly well be. I'm the God.

02:18:59.560 --> 02:19:01.560
But that's nothing for you to figure out.

02:19:01.560 --> 02:19:04.560
And I could tell you what I think happens to be more or less right,

02:19:04.560 --> 02:19:07.560
but there isn't any reason why you should pay any attention to it.

02:19:07.560 --> 02:19:12.560
What impact do you feel alternative media is currently having or could potentially have?

02:19:12.560 --> 02:19:15.560
I'm actually a little more interested in its potential.

02:19:15.560 --> 02:19:20.560
And just to define my terms, by alternative media I'm referring to media that are

02:19:20.560 --> 02:19:24.560
or could be citizen controlled as opposed to state or corporate controlled.

02:19:24.560 --> 02:19:27.560
You know, that's what's kept people together.

02:19:27.560 --> 02:19:30.560
To the extent that people are able to do something constructive,

02:19:30.560 --> 02:19:33.560
it's because they have some way of interacting.

02:19:33.560 --> 02:19:35.560
I mean, I've always felt it would be a very positive thing,

02:19:35.560 --> 02:19:37.560
and it should be pushed as far as it can go.

02:19:37.560 --> 02:19:40.560
I think it's going to have a very hard time.

02:19:40.560 --> 02:19:46.560
There's just such a concentration of resources and power that

02:19:46.560 --> 02:19:53.560
alternative media, while extremely important, are going to have quite a battle.

02:19:53.560 --> 02:19:56.560
It's true there are things which are small successes,

02:19:56.560 --> 02:20:01.560
but it's because people have just been willing to put in incredible effort.

02:20:01.560 --> 02:20:03.560
Like I say, take Z Magazine.

02:20:03.560 --> 02:20:11.560
I mean, that's a national magazine which literally has a staff of two and no resources.

02:20:11.560 --> 02:20:15.560
Tell us a little bit about Z Magazine, what it is and what makes it different.

02:20:15.560 --> 02:20:17.560
Go ahead.

02:20:17.560 --> 02:20:19.560
Go ahead? Thank you.

02:20:19.560 --> 02:20:24.560
We just wanted to do a magazine that would address all the sides of political life,

02:20:24.560 --> 02:20:29.560
economics, race, gender, authority, political relations.

02:20:29.560 --> 02:20:34.560
We wanted to do it in a way that would incorporate attention to how to not only

02:20:34.560 --> 02:20:38.560
understand what's going on, but how to make things better, what to aim toward,

02:20:38.560 --> 02:20:44.560
and to provide at the same time humor, culture, a kind of a magazine that people

02:20:44.560 --> 02:20:48.560
could relate to and could get a lot out of and could participate in.

02:20:48.560 --> 02:20:52.560
What we wanted to do, which we didn't think was provided by the existing magazines,

02:20:52.560 --> 02:20:58.560
was to give it a real activist slant so that it could be very useful to the

02:20:58.560 --> 02:21:01.560
variety of movements in the country.

02:21:01.560 --> 02:21:05.560
And we just felt there wasn't a magazine that reflected that, that inspired people

02:21:05.560 --> 02:21:10.560
and that gave people sort of a strategy and perhaps even a vision of how things

02:21:10.560 --> 02:21:12.560
could be better.

02:21:12.560 --> 02:21:19.560
Music

02:21:19.560 --> 02:21:22.560
The South End Press has sort of made it.

02:21:22.560 --> 02:21:24.560
That is, they're surviving.

02:21:24.560 --> 02:21:27.560
It's a small collective, again, with no resources, and they put out a lot of

02:21:27.560 --> 02:21:29.560
books, including quite a lot of good books.

02:21:29.560 --> 02:21:34.560
But for a South End book to get reviewed is almost impossible.

02:21:34.560 --> 02:21:40.560
Editorially and business-wise, we make decisions based on politics that no

02:21:40.560 --> 02:21:46.560
corporate publisher can really advocate because of their ties to corporate America.

02:21:46.560 --> 02:21:51.560
We can solicit manuscripts based on what we feel is the relevance for the

02:21:51.560 --> 02:21:56.560
movement, and we can make our business decisions based on whether we feel people

02:21:56.560 --> 02:22:02.560
can afford our books, whether we feel that a book might not make that much money,

02:22:02.560 --> 02:22:06.560
but it needs to be out there and maybe there is a thousand people who would buy it.

02:22:06.560 --> 02:22:12.560
And those are criteria that we feel are very precious in this day of corporate

02:22:12.560 --> 02:22:14.560
mergers.

02:22:14.560 --> 02:22:20.560
And likewise our structure about sharing work and continuing our training process

02:22:20.560 --> 02:22:22.560
as long as we're at the press.

02:22:22.560 --> 02:22:27.560
There are losses there in terms of productivity, but in terms of empowerment,

02:22:27.560 --> 02:22:33.560
all of us are then able to say, my perspective is different from yours.

02:22:33.560 --> 02:22:39.560
Then all of our intelligence gets used in making those decisions and not just

02:22:39.560 --> 02:22:44.560
whoever happens to have done it the longest, whoever happens to have graduated

02:22:44.560 --> 02:22:49.560
from the best schools in order to be the best editor making all the decisions and

02:22:49.560 --> 02:22:53.560
only using his or her intelligence.

02:22:53.560 --> 02:22:56.560
Listening to supported radio in the United States has undergone a remarkable

02:22:56.560 --> 02:22:59.560
growth in the last decade.

02:22:59.560 --> 02:23:03.560
It's perhaps the fastest growing alternative media.

02:23:03.560 --> 02:23:05.560
There are many reasons for this.

02:23:05.560 --> 02:23:10.560
First and foremost, it's enormously economical and it reaches communities that

02:23:10.560 --> 02:23:14.560
have not been served by community radio before.

02:23:14.560 --> 02:23:18.560
And in Boulder, particularly, we see with someone like Noam Chomsky who's been

02:23:18.560 --> 02:23:23.560
there I believe three times in the last six years, he has a tremendous audience

02:23:23.560 --> 02:23:28.560
and KJNU is partly responsible for that because we play his tapes on a regular

02:23:28.560 --> 02:23:31.560
basis, we play his lectures and his interviews.

02:23:31.560 --> 02:23:35.560
So when he does come to Boulder and people hear what he has to say, they're

02:23:35.560 --> 02:23:37.560
able to tune in.

02:23:37.560 --> 02:23:40.560
It's not something exotic or esoteric that he's talking about.

02:23:40.560 --> 02:23:45.560
It's material that they're very familiar with and he's noted this incidentally.

02:23:45.560 --> 02:23:50.560
If there's a listener supported radio station, it means that people can get daily,

02:23:50.560 --> 02:23:56.560
every day, a different way of looking at the world, not just what the corporate

02:23:56.560 --> 02:24:00.560
media want you to see, but a different picture, a different understanding.

02:24:00.560 --> 02:24:03.560
Not only can you hear it, but you can participate in it.

02:24:03.560 --> 02:24:07.560
You can add your own thoughts and you can learn something and so on.

02:24:07.560 --> 02:24:11.560
Well, that's the way people become human.

02:24:11.560 --> 02:24:17.560
That's the way you become human participants in a social and political system.

02:24:17.560 --> 02:24:21.560
Hello, I'm Ed Robinson and this is Non-Corporate News.

02:24:21.560 --> 02:24:24.560
What is Non-Corporate News and why is it necessary?

02:24:24.560 --> 02:24:28.560
I didn't want to just show another film at a library or something.

02:24:28.560 --> 02:24:30.560
I wanted to make my own statement.

02:24:30.560 --> 02:24:33.560
I thought it would be more fun to do and perhaps I could get other people

02:24:33.560 --> 02:24:36.560
involved in a project besides showing a film.

02:24:36.560 --> 02:24:38.560
We could make a film or a video.

02:24:38.560 --> 02:24:43.560
The local cable station is hooked up to three communities, Lynn, Swampscott,

02:24:43.560 --> 02:24:49.560
and Salem, so that's 30,000 people or 30,000 homes.

02:24:49.560 --> 02:24:53.560
I'm not sure, but I'm sure a lot of people will see it and they'll be the kind

02:24:53.560 --> 02:24:58.560
of people who don't go out to see a film.

02:24:58.560 --> 02:25:01.560
They'll go right into their houses, so if they're flipping through the channels,

02:25:01.560 --> 02:25:05.560
they might be able to get a completely new idea of the world.

02:25:05.560 --> 02:25:15.560
So there's kind of networks of cooperation developed, which I mean,

02:25:15.560 --> 02:25:20.560
like here for example, is a collection of stuff from a friend of mine in Los Angeles

02:25:20.560 --> 02:25:25.560
who does careful monitoring of the whole press in Los Angeles and a lot of the

02:25:25.560 --> 02:25:30.560
British press, which he reads and does selections.

02:25:30.560 --> 02:25:34.560
I don't have to read the movie reviews and the local gossip and all this kind of stuff,

02:25:34.560 --> 02:25:39.560
but I get the occasional nugget that sneaks through and that you find if you're

02:25:39.560 --> 02:25:44.560
carefully and intelligently and critically reviewing a wide range of press.

02:25:44.560 --> 02:25:47.560
Well, there are a fair number of people who do this and we exchange information.

02:25:47.560 --> 02:25:52.560
We wrote this two-volume work in which we saw one another for a couple weeks

02:25:52.560 --> 02:25:57.560
when we were getting started, but then we wrote two volumes essentially

02:25:57.560 --> 02:26:05.560
without seeing one another, just by phone, by mail and exchanging manuscripts.

02:26:05.560 --> 02:26:09.560
But this takes a lot of communication by mail.

02:26:09.560 --> 02:26:13.560
My Chomsky file is a couple of feet thick.

02:26:13.560 --> 02:26:18.560
The end result is that you do have access to resources in a way which I doubt that

02:26:18.560 --> 02:26:23.560
any national intelligence agency can duplicate a little on scholarship.

02:26:23.560 --> 02:26:27.560
So there are ways of compensating for the absence of resources.

02:26:27.560 --> 02:26:29.560
People can do things.

02:26:29.560 --> 02:26:34.560
Like for example, I found out about the arms flow to Iran by reading transcripts

02:26:34.560 --> 02:26:40.560
of the BBC and by reading an interview somewhere with an Israeli ambassador

02:26:40.560 --> 02:26:43.560
in one city and reading something else in the Israeli press.

02:26:43.560 --> 02:26:47.560
Now, okay, the information is there, but it's there to a fanatic,

02:26:47.560 --> 02:26:52.560
somebody who wants to spend a substantial part of their time and energy

02:26:52.560 --> 02:26:57.560
exploring it and comparing today's lies with yesterday's leaks and so on.

02:26:57.560 --> 02:26:59.560
That's a research job.

02:26:59.560 --> 02:27:03.560
And it just simply doesn't make any sense to ask the general population

02:27:03.560 --> 02:27:08.560
to dedicate themselves to this task on every issue.

02:27:08.560 --> 02:27:10.560
I'm not given the false modesty.

02:27:10.560 --> 02:27:14.560
There are things that I can do and I know that I can do them reasonably well,

02:27:14.560 --> 02:27:22.560
including analysis and study, research.

02:27:22.560 --> 02:27:24.560
I mean, I know how to do that sort of thing.

02:27:24.560 --> 02:27:27.560
And I think I have a reasonable understanding of the way the world works

02:27:27.560 --> 02:27:29.560
as much as anyone can.

02:27:29.560 --> 02:27:34.560
And that turns out to be a very useful resource for people who are doing active

02:27:34.560 --> 02:27:41.560
organizing, trying to engage themselves in a way which will make it a little bit

02:27:41.560 --> 02:27:43.560
of a better world.

02:27:43.560 --> 02:27:46.560
And if you can help in those things or participate in them,

02:27:46.560 --> 02:27:48.560
well, that's rewarding.

02:27:48.560 --> 02:27:53.560
I wonder if you can envision a time when people like myself,

02:27:53.560 --> 02:27:59.560
again, the naive people of this world, can again take pride in the United States.

02:27:59.560 --> 02:28:02.560
And is that even a healthy wish now?

02:28:02.560 --> 02:28:08.560
Because it may be this hunger for pride in our country that makes us more easily

02:28:08.560 --> 02:28:12.560
manipulated by the powers that you talk about.

02:28:12.560 --> 02:28:16.560
I think you first of all have to ask what you mean by your country.

02:28:16.560 --> 02:28:19.560
Now, if you mean by the country, the government,

02:28:19.560 --> 02:28:23.560
I don't think you can be proud of it and I don't think you could ever be proud of it.

02:28:23.560 --> 02:28:25.560
Or you could be proud of any government.

02:28:25.560 --> 02:28:28.560
It's not our government.

02:28:28.560 --> 02:28:29.560
And you shouldn't be.

02:28:29.560 --> 02:28:31.560
States are violent institutions.

02:28:31.560 --> 02:28:34.560
The government of any country, including ours,

02:28:34.560 --> 02:28:38.560
represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent.

02:28:38.560 --> 02:28:41.560
States are violent to the extent that they're powerful.

02:28:41.560 --> 02:28:42.560
That's roughly accurate.

02:28:42.560 --> 02:28:45.560
You look at American history, it's nothing to write home about.

02:28:45.560 --> 02:28:46.560
Why are we here?

02:28:46.560 --> 02:28:50.560
We're here because, say, some 10 million Native Americans were wiped out.

02:28:50.560 --> 02:28:53.560
That's not very pretty.

02:28:53.560 --> 02:28:57.560
Until the 1960s, it was still Cowboys and Indians.

02:28:57.560 --> 02:29:01.560
In the 1970s, for the first time, really, it became possible,

02:29:01.560 --> 02:29:05.560
even for scholarship, to try to deal with the facts as they were.

02:29:05.560 --> 02:29:09.560
For example, to deal with the fact that the Native American population was far higher

02:29:09.560 --> 02:29:13.560
than had been claimed, millions higher, maybe as many as 10 million higher

02:29:13.560 --> 02:29:16.560
than had been claimed, and that they had an advanced civilization,

02:29:16.560 --> 02:29:20.560
and that there was something akin to genocide that took place.

02:29:20.560 --> 02:29:24.560
We went through 200 years of our history without facing that fact.

02:29:24.560 --> 02:29:28.560
One of the effects of the 1960s is it's possible to at least begin

02:29:28.560 --> 02:29:30.560
to come to think about the facts.

02:29:30.560 --> 02:29:33.560
Well, that's in advance.

02:29:33.560 --> 02:29:36.560
Do you think that this activism 20 years ago has made a difference

02:29:36.560 --> 02:29:39.560
in how our society operates now?

02:29:39.560 --> 02:29:44.560
It has not changed the institutions and the way they function,

02:29:44.560 --> 02:29:47.560
but it has led to very significant cultural changes.

02:29:47.560 --> 02:29:51.560
Remember, these movements of the 60s expanded in the 70s

02:29:51.560 --> 02:29:54.560
and expanded further in the 80s, and they reached into other parts

02:29:54.560 --> 02:29:57.560
of the society and different issues.

02:29:57.560 --> 02:30:04.560
A lot of things that seemed outrageous in the 60s are taken for granted today.

02:30:04.560 --> 02:30:07.560
So, for example, take the feminist movement, for example,

02:30:07.560 --> 02:30:09.560
which barely began to exist in the 60s.

02:30:09.560 --> 02:30:13.560
Now it's part of general consciousness and awareness.

02:30:13.560 --> 02:30:17.560
The ecological movements began in the 70s.

02:30:17.560 --> 02:30:21.560
The third world solidarity movements were very limited in the 60s.

02:30:21.560 --> 02:30:23.560
It was really Vietnam.

02:30:23.560 --> 02:30:27.560
In the 60s also it was a student movement, as you say.

02:30:27.560 --> 02:30:31.560
Now it's not. Now it's mainstream America.

02:30:33.560 --> 02:30:36.560
If there is more dissidence now than you can remember,

02:30:36.560 --> 02:30:40.560
why do you go on to write that the people feel isolated?

02:30:40.560 --> 02:30:44.560
Because I think much of the general population recognizes

02:30:44.560 --> 02:30:49.560
that the organized institutions do not reflect their concerns

02:30:49.560 --> 02:30:51.560
and interests and needs.

02:30:51.560 --> 02:30:55.560
They do not feel that they participate meaningfully in the political system.

02:30:55.560 --> 02:30:58.560
They do not feel that the media are telling them the truth

02:30:58.560 --> 02:31:00.560
or even reflect their concerns.

02:31:00.560 --> 02:31:05.560
They go outside of the organized institutions to act.

02:31:05.560 --> 02:31:07.560
We see more and more of our elected leaders

02:31:07.560 --> 02:31:09.560
know less and less of what they're doing.

02:31:09.560 --> 02:31:10.560
This medium does that.

02:31:10.560 --> 02:31:11.560
Very striking.

02:31:11.560 --> 02:31:15.560
In fact, the presidential elections have been almost removed from the point

02:31:15.560 --> 02:31:19.560
where the public even takes them seriously as involving a matter of choice.

02:31:19.560 --> 02:31:21.560
So what do you think about what goes on in the White House?

02:31:21.560 --> 02:31:23.560
It's kept too private, I think.

02:31:23.560 --> 02:31:25.560
They should come out.

02:31:25.560 --> 02:31:26.560
I know.

02:31:26.560 --> 02:31:28.560
Who should talk to the people?

02:31:28.560 --> 02:31:30.560
George Bush.

02:31:30.560 --> 02:31:34.560
Well, it means that the political system increasingly functions

02:31:34.560 --> 02:31:37.560
without public input.

02:31:37.560 --> 02:31:42.560
It means to an increasing extent not only do people not ratify decisions presented to them,

02:31:42.560 --> 02:31:45.560
but they don't even take the trouble of ratifying them.

02:31:45.560 --> 02:31:48.560
They assume that the decisions are going on independently

02:31:48.560 --> 02:31:50.560
of what they may do in the polling booth.

02:31:50.560 --> 02:31:52.560
Ratification would be what?

02:31:52.560 --> 02:31:57.560
Well, ratification would mean a system in which there are two positions presented to me, the voter.

02:31:57.560 --> 02:32:00.560
I go into the polling booth and I push one or another button

02:32:00.560 --> 02:32:02.560
depending on which of those positions I want.

02:32:02.560 --> 02:32:05.560
That's a very limited form of democracy,

02:32:05.560 --> 02:32:10.560
and really meaningful democracy would mean that I play a role in forming those decisions

02:32:10.560 --> 02:32:12.560
and creating those positions.

02:32:12.560 --> 02:32:14.560
And that would be real democracy.

02:32:14.560 --> 02:32:15.560
That's not happening.

02:32:15.560 --> 02:32:16.560
We're very far from that.

02:32:16.560 --> 02:32:19.560
But we're even departing from the point where there is ratification.

02:32:19.560 --> 02:32:21.560
When you have stage-managed elections,

02:32:21.560 --> 02:32:25.560
with the public relations industry determining what words come out of people's mouth,

02:32:25.560 --> 02:32:29.560
candidates decide what to say on the basis of tests

02:32:29.560 --> 02:32:32.560
that determine what the effect will be across the population.

02:32:32.560 --> 02:32:37.560
Somehow people don't see how profoundly contemptuous that is of democracy.

02:32:37.560 --> 02:32:47.560
The summer moment is near, but first the swearing-in of Van Quaer.

02:32:47.560 --> 02:32:54.560
Please move to your seats.

02:32:54.560 --> 02:33:01.560
For the first time in this century, for the first time in perhaps all history,

02:33:01.560 --> 02:33:06.560
man does not have to invent a system by which to live.

02:33:06.560 --> 02:33:11.560
We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better.

02:33:11.560 --> 02:33:17.560
We don't have to wrest justice from the candy.

02:33:17.560 --> 02:33:20.560
We only have to summon it from within ourselves.

02:33:20.560 --> 02:33:25.560
This is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through

02:33:25.560 --> 02:33:27.560
into a room called tomorrow.

02:33:27.560 --> 02:33:33.560
Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom.

02:33:33.560 --> 02:33:35.560
Here come the bloody world.

02:33:35.560 --> 02:33:38.560
Paget paper, free expression, free thought.

02:33:38.560 --> 02:33:43.560
Is there a more conforming intellectual staff than the left-wing?

02:33:43.560 --> 02:33:46.560
We'll never see a cloud.

02:33:46.560 --> 02:33:52.560
We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for men on Earth

02:33:52.560 --> 02:33:57.560
through free market, free speech, free elections,

02:33:57.560 --> 02:34:02.560
and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.

02:34:02.560 --> 02:34:05.560
I've spoken at a thousand points in life.

02:34:05.560 --> 02:34:13.560
All the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation doing good.

02:34:13.560 --> 02:34:20.560
To the world, too, we offer new engagements and a renewed vow.

02:34:20.560 --> 02:34:31.560
We will stay strong to protect the peace, the offered hand, the reluctant fist.

02:34:31.560 --> 02:34:40.560
America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principles.

02:34:40.560 --> 02:34:43.560
We as a people have such a purpose today.

02:34:43.560 --> 02:34:56.560
It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

02:34:56.560 --> 02:35:01.560
Referring back to your earlier comment about escaping from or doing away with capitalism,

02:35:01.560 --> 02:35:06.560
I was wondering what scheme, workable scheme, you would put in its place.

02:35:06.560 --> 02:35:08.560
Me?

02:35:08.560 --> 02:35:14.560
What would you suggest to others who might be in a position to set it up and get it going?

02:35:14.560 --> 02:35:20.560
Well, I think that what used to be called centuries ago wage slavery is intolerable.

02:35:20.560 --> 02:35:25.560
I don't think people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive.

02:35:25.560 --> 02:35:32.560
I think that the economic institutions ought to be run democratically by their participants,

02:35:32.560 --> 02:35:35.560
by the communities in which they exist, and so on.

02:35:35.560 --> 02:35:42.560
And I think basically through various kinds of free association.

02:35:42.560 --> 02:35:49.560
Historically, have there been any sustained examples on any substantial scale of societies

02:35:49.560 --> 02:35:53.560
which approximated to the anarchist ideal?

02:35:53.560 --> 02:36:01.560
There are small societies, small in number, that have, I think, done so quite well.

02:36:01.560 --> 02:36:06.560
And there are a few examples of large-scale libertarian revolutions

02:36:06.560 --> 02:36:09.560
which were largely anarchist in their structure.

02:36:09.560 --> 02:36:13.560
As to the first, small societies extending over a long period,

02:36:13.560 --> 02:36:17.560
I myself think the most dramatic example is perhaps the Israeli Kibbutzim,

02:36:17.560 --> 02:36:20.560
which for a long period, may or may not be true today,

02:36:20.560 --> 02:36:23.560
really were constructed on anarchist principles, that is,

02:36:23.560 --> 02:36:29.560
of direct worker control integration of agriculture, industry, service, personal life,

02:36:29.560 --> 02:36:34.560
on an egalitarian basis with direct and in fact quite active participation in self-management,

02:36:34.560 --> 02:36:38.560
and were, I should think, extraordinarily successful.

02:36:38.560 --> 02:36:43.560
A good example of a really large-scale anarchist revolution, or largely anarchist revolution,

02:36:43.560 --> 02:36:48.560
in fact the best example to my knowledge, is the Spanish Revolution in 1936.

02:36:48.560 --> 02:36:51.560
And in fact, you can't tell what would have happened,

02:36:51.560 --> 02:36:53.560
that anarchist revolution was simply destroyed by force,

02:36:53.560 --> 02:36:58.560
but during the period in which it was alive, I think it was inspiring testimony

02:36:58.560 --> 02:37:04.560
to the ability of poorer working people to organize, manage their affairs

02:37:04.560 --> 02:37:07.560
extremely successfully without coercion and control.

02:37:07.560 --> 02:37:12.560
How far does the success of libertarian socialism or anarchism as a way of life

02:37:12.560 --> 02:37:17.560
really depend on a fundamental change in the nature of man,

02:37:17.560 --> 02:37:22.560
both in his motivation, his altruism, and also in his knowledge and sophistication?

02:37:22.560 --> 02:37:25.560
I think it not only depends on it, but in fact,

02:37:25.560 --> 02:37:30.560
the whole purpose of libertarian socialism is that it will contribute to it.

02:37:30.560 --> 02:37:34.560
It will contribute to a spiritual transformation,

02:37:34.560 --> 02:37:40.560
precisely that kind of great transformation in the way humans conceive of themselves

02:37:40.560 --> 02:37:46.560
and their ability to act, to decide, to create, to produce, to inquire,

02:37:46.560 --> 02:37:52.560
precisely that spiritual transformation that social thinkers from the left Marxist tradition,

02:37:52.560 --> 02:37:57.560
from Luxembourg, say, on over through anarcho-syndicalists have always emphasized.

02:37:57.560 --> 02:38:01.560
So on the one hand, it requires that spiritual transformation.

02:38:01.560 --> 02:38:04.560
On the other hand, its purpose is to create institutions

02:38:04.560 --> 02:38:06.560
which will contribute to that transformation.

02:38:11.560 --> 02:38:15.560
You've written that in looking at contributions of gifted thinkers,

02:38:15.560 --> 02:38:18.560
one must make sure to understand their contributions,

02:38:18.560 --> 02:38:22.560
but also to eliminate the errors in them.

02:38:22.560 --> 02:38:27.560
And of your ideas, what would your guess would be discarded

02:38:27.560 --> 02:38:30.560
and what would be assimilated by future thinkers?

02:38:30.560 --> 02:38:34.560
Well, I mean, I would assume virtually everything would be discarded.

02:38:34.560 --> 02:38:38.560
For example, and here we have to distinguish.

02:38:38.560 --> 02:38:41.560
I mean, the work that I do in my professional area,

02:38:41.560 --> 02:38:44.560
I mean, if I still believed what I believed ten years ago,

02:38:44.560 --> 02:38:46.560
I'd assume the field is dead.

02:38:46.560 --> 02:38:49.560
So I assume that when next time you read a student's paper,

02:38:49.560 --> 02:38:51.560
you're going to see something that has to be changed

02:38:51.560 --> 02:38:53.560
and you continue to make progress.

02:38:53.560 --> 02:38:56.560
In dealing with social and political issues,

02:38:56.560 --> 02:39:00.560
in my view, what is at all understood is pretty straightforward.

02:39:00.560 --> 02:39:03.560
I don't think that there may be deep and complicated things,

02:39:03.560 --> 02:39:06.560
but if so, they're not understood.

02:39:06.560 --> 02:39:11.560
The basic ways, to the extent that we understand society at all,

02:39:11.560 --> 02:39:13.560
it's pretty straightforward.

02:39:13.560 --> 02:39:17.560
I don't think that those simple understandings are likely to undergo much change.

02:39:17.560 --> 02:39:19.560
The point is that you have to work,

02:39:19.560 --> 02:39:23.560
and that's why the propaganda system is so successful.

02:39:23.560 --> 02:39:27.560
Very few people are going to have the time or the energy or the commitment

02:39:27.560 --> 02:39:30.560
to carry out the constant battle that's required

02:39:30.560 --> 02:39:38.560
to get outside of, you know, McNeely or Van Rather or somebody like that.

02:39:38.560 --> 02:39:41.560
The easy thing to do, you know, you come home from work, you're tired,

02:39:41.560 --> 02:39:45.560
it's a busy day, you're not going to spend the evening carrying out a research project.

02:39:45.560 --> 02:39:48.560
So you turn on the tube and say, it's probably right.

02:39:48.560 --> 02:39:52.560
So you look at the headlines on the paper and then you watch the sports or something.

02:39:52.560 --> 02:39:56.560
And that's basically the way the system and the indoctrination works.

02:39:56.560 --> 02:39:59.560
Sure, the other stuff is there, but you're going to have to work to find it.

02:40:01.560 --> 02:40:09.560
Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths.

02:40:09.560 --> 02:40:15.560
The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain,

02:40:15.560 --> 02:40:19.560
which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy,

02:40:19.560 --> 02:40:26.560
on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation.

02:40:26.560 --> 02:40:33.560
Now, it's long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle

02:40:33.560 --> 02:40:36.560
will destroy itself in time.

02:40:36.560 --> 02:40:41.560
It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails,

02:40:41.560 --> 02:40:49.560
as long as it's possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited,

02:40:49.560 --> 02:40:54.560
that the world is an infinite resource and that the world is an infinite garbage can.

02:40:55.560 --> 02:41:01.560
At this stage of history, either one of two things is possible.

02:41:01.560 --> 02:41:06.560
Either the general population will take control of its own destiny

02:41:06.560 --> 02:41:10.560
and will concern itself with community interests,

02:41:10.560 --> 02:41:16.560
guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others,

02:41:16.560 --> 02:41:21.560
or alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.

02:41:21.560 --> 02:41:25.560
As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority,

02:41:25.560 --> 02:41:30.560
it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves.

02:41:30.560 --> 02:41:34.560
But the conditions of survival, let alone justice,

02:41:34.560 --> 02:41:39.560
require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole,

02:41:39.560 --> 02:41:42.560
and by now that means the global community.

02:41:43.560 --> 02:41:47.560
The question is whether privileged elites should dominate mass communication

02:41:47.560 --> 02:41:51.560
and should use this power as they tell us they must,

02:41:51.560 --> 02:41:56.560
namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority

02:41:56.560 --> 02:41:59.560
and remove them from the public arena.

02:41:59.560 --> 02:42:04.560
The question in brief is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved

02:42:04.560 --> 02:42:06.560
or threats to be avoided.

02:42:06.560 --> 02:42:10.560
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence,

02:42:10.560 --> 02:42:14.560
democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured.

02:42:14.560 --> 02:42:17.560
They may well be essential to survival.

02:42:22.560 --> 02:42:25.560
He's up there thinking for himself,

02:42:25.560 --> 02:42:31.560
and he's deciphering this tremendously overweighted body of information

02:42:31.560 --> 02:42:35.560
which he puts into an order

02:42:35.560 --> 02:42:38.560
and gives you the feeling that you can do the same thing,

02:42:38.560 --> 02:42:40.560
that the whole thing is decipherable.

02:42:40.560 --> 02:42:43.560
And he also gives you the sense that there is a source,

02:42:43.560 --> 02:42:48.560
there's a center to a dissenting population,

02:42:48.560 --> 02:42:51.560
although we feel that there's no center.

02:42:51.560 --> 02:42:56.560
And I think that is what reactivated in me

02:42:56.560 --> 02:43:01.560
a desire to get back,

02:43:01.560 --> 02:43:07.560
get reacquainted with the political scene after 30 years of alienation from it.

02:43:09.560 --> 02:43:12.560
You do hundreds of interviews and lectures,

02:43:12.560 --> 02:43:18.560
and you're dealing with massacres in East Timor and invasions of Panama, et cetera,

02:43:18.560 --> 02:43:21.560
pretty horrific stuff, death squads.

02:43:21.560 --> 02:43:22.560
What keeps you going?

02:43:22.560 --> 02:43:25.560
I mean, don't you get burned out on this material?

02:43:28.560 --> 02:43:33.560
That's mainly a matter of whether you can look yourself in the mirror, I think.

02:43:34.560 --> 02:43:35.560
Oh, gotta go.

02:43:35.560 --> 02:43:37.560
Get these people in town.

02:43:37.560 --> 02:43:38.560
Okay.

02:43:38.560 --> 02:43:40.560
Maybe you can say, all aboard for us.

02:43:40.560 --> 02:43:45.560
All aboard.

02:43:48.560 --> 02:43:49.560
Bye-bye.

02:43:49.560 --> 02:44:14.560
All aboard.

02:44:20.560 --> 02:44:22.560
Good to see you.

02:44:22.560 --> 02:44:24.560
Just hit the microphone.

02:44:25.560 --> 02:44:26.560
Thank you.

02:44:26.560 --> 02:44:27.560
Bye, Canada.

02:44:27.560 --> 02:44:28.560
Goodbye, Canada.

02:44:28.560 --> 02:44:29.560
Bye.

02:44:33.560 --> 02:44:35.560
It's like I can't pass the hour that you agreed to.

02:44:35.560 --> 02:44:37.560
Can I give you an introduction?

02:44:37.560 --> 02:44:38.560
He's from Harvard.

02:44:38.560 --> 02:44:39.560
Oh, I heard that.

02:44:39.560 --> 02:44:41.560
Oh, yes, that is true.

02:44:41.560 --> 02:44:42.560
Who the bleep is?

02:44:43.560 --> 02:44:45.560
Sorry about making you answer that.

02:44:45.560 --> 02:44:46.560
It's okay.

02:44:46.560 --> 02:44:47.560
It worked.

02:44:47.560 --> 02:44:48.560
Did we hit it in two minutes?

02:44:48.560 --> 02:44:50.560
Well, we did pretty well.

02:44:50.560 --> 02:44:53.560
Actually, that means less sports, and that's fine with me.

02:44:55.560 --> 02:44:57.560
People out there, they don't know what's going on.

02:44:57.560 --> 02:45:00.560
If the people knew what you say here today, there'd be a...

02:45:00.560 --> 02:45:02.560
There'd be a real change.

02:45:02.560 --> 02:45:03.560
Thank you.

02:45:04.560 --> 02:45:07.560
On that optimistic note, Professor Chomsky, thank you very much indeed.

02:45:08.560 --> 02:45:10.560
So how did it go?

02:45:10.560 --> 02:45:14.560
Oh, I thought it was sort of technical sounding.

02:45:14.560 --> 02:45:18.560
But, um, there wasn't much of a...

02:45:19.560 --> 02:45:22.560
Did you ever think of running for president?

02:45:22.560 --> 02:45:26.560
If I ran for president, the first thing I'd do is tell people not to vote for me.

02:45:31.560 --> 02:45:34.560
This guy's gotta go home. He really does.

02:45:34.560 --> 02:45:38.560
People still believe that the South takes Boston as a world champion.

02:45:38.560 --> 02:45:44.560
Thanks.

02:46:38.560 --> 02:46:40.560
So take it up!

02:46:40.560 --> 02:47:09.560
On that freedom train

02:47:09.560 --> 02:47:14.060
That's freedom, love, all aboard.

02:47:14.060 --> 02:47:15.060
Get on board.

02:47:15.060 --> 02:47:19.060
That's freedom, change, all aboard.

02:47:19.060 --> 02:47:21.560
You better get on board.

02:47:21.560 --> 02:47:24.060
King of love, all aboard.

02:47:24.060 --> 02:47:26.560
You better get on board.

02:47:26.560 --> 02:47:30.060
That's the King of love, all aboard.

02:47:30.060 --> 02:47:40.060
You better get on board.